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ROSES   OF   PAESTUM 


Nay,  ye  may  not  liken  dog-roses  to  the  rose,  or  wind- 
flowers  to  the  roses  of  the  garden.  —  THEOC.  ID.  v. 

(LANG'S  Trans.) 


ROSES   OF  PAESTUM  BY 

EDWARD  McCURDY 


PRINTED  FOR  THOMAS  B  MOSHER  AND 
PUBLISHED  BY  HIM  AT  43  EXCHANGE 
STREET  PORTLAND  MAINE  MDCCCCXII 


COPYRIGHT 

THOMAS  B  MOSHER 

1912 


Limited  to  Seven  Hundred 
Copies  Jor  Sale  in  America 


ROSES  OF  PAESTUM 

TO   G 

You  brought  to  Paestum  roses, 
And  in  Poseidon's  plain 
A  crttmbling  wall  encloses, 
You  made  them  bloom  again 
Abotit  his  mighty  fane. 
Each  temple  with  your  dower 
Was  decked  a  lovely  bower. 

Red  roses, yea,  you  brought  them, 

And  roses  white  as  snow, 

And  like  Greek  gardeners  taught  them 

To  stand  in  many  a  row 

And  their  sweet  scents  to  throw. 

Virgil,  Ausonius, 

Did  see  and  smell  them  thus. 

From  love's  most  secret  places 
You  brought  them  all  with  you, 
That  in  these  wide  waste  spaces 
Gardens  might  spring  anew 
And  with  pink  petals  strew 
The  sultry  azure  floor 
Thetis'  white  feet  explore. 

Perchance  those  frowning  mountains 

Seeing,  shall  cease  to  frown, 

And  from  their  rock-sealed  fountains 

Clear  crystal  streams  send  down 

To  lave  that  roseate  crown, 

And  keep  those  roses  fair 

Your  love  has  planted  there. 

WILLIAM   ASPENWALL    BRADLEY 


499279 

UMUKZ 


TO  THE  READER: 
BY  WAY  OF  PREFACE 

HESE  Essays  treat  of  Italy  and  the  medi- 
eval    spirit,  —  and    Italy    is    a    wayward 
I  sovereign,  and  her  beauty  leads  a  man  far 
afield. 

Let  me  say — now  that  the  work  is  done  in  such 
measure  as  I  am  able  —  that  my  purpose  was  to  trace 
the  mediceval  spirit  in  deed  and  dream  by  considering 
some  of  its  imaginative  activities,  —  its  questings  of  the 
ideal  in  art,  in  faith,  in  love,  and  in  fantasies  of  things 
more  visionary  than  these. 

They  were  the  roses  of  mediceval  beauty  that  I  set  out 
to  gather,  and  therefore  the  leaves  are  named  of  the 
Paestan  roses  because  these  also  were  of  seed  of  Greece 
and  bloomed  in  Italy, 

Now  that  the  leaves  are  all  placed  together  1  know 
that  they  are  but  wind-flowers.  Some  day  I  hope  to 
gather  of  the  roses  of  the  garden. 


CONTENTS 


TO  THE  READER  :    BY  WAY  OF  PREFACE  Vll 

FOREWORD XI 

PROEM:  ALL'  ITALIA 3 

I     ROSES  OF  PAESTUM 7 

II     THE  VITA  NUOVA 33 

III  PALMERS,  PILGRIMS,  AND  ROMERS  58 

IV  VISION  AND  MEMORY 95 

V     UNDISCOVERED  ISLANDS   .     .     .     .  123 

VI     DEO  SOLI  INVICTO 142 

VII    THE  RING  OF  CANACE     ....  162 

VIII    THE  HORNS  OF  ELFLAND     .     .     .  180 

IX,  ROS  ROSARUM 189 


FOREWORD 

'HE  first  and  only  edition  of  Roses  of 
Paestum  was  published  twelve  years 
ago  x  and  its  reception  precisely  the 
same  as  that  accorded  Maurice  Hewlett's 
Earthwork  out  of  Tuscany.  In  other  words 
both  books  to  the  English  critical  mind  were 
regarded  as  so  much  literary  love's  labor  lost. 
Mr.  Hewlett  has  long  since  recovered  from 
this  lack  of  appreciation  and  it  is  our  belief 
that  Mr.  McCurdy  also  is  in  a  fair  way  to 
come  into  his  own.  He  has  recently  made 
a  very  complete  translation  of  Leonardo  da 
Vinci's  Note  Books  as  well  as  given  separately 
in  a  still  more  accessible  shape  the  thoughts 
on  Life,  Nature  and  Art  of  the  great  artist.2 

'  Roses  of  Paestum  by  Edward  McCurdy.  London: 
George  Allen,  156,  Charing  Cross  Road,  1900.  (Fcap 
8vo.  Pp.  viii :  1-200.) 

2  Leonardo  da  Vincfs  Note  Books  arranged  and 
rendered  into  English  with  Introduction.  (Octavo.) 
London,  1906  ;  and  the  Thoughts  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci 
as  recorded  in  his  "  Note  Books."  (Fcap  8vo.)  Lon- 
don, 1907. 


xii  Fore-word 

The  text  of  our  reissue  of  Roses  of  Paestum 
has  been  revised  and  a  brief  Proem  added 
which,  though  written  at  the  same  time  as  the 
other  essays,  was  omitted  for  reasons  of  a 
personal  nature  that  no  longer  exist.  Mr. 
McCurdy  in  this  new  edition  again  offers  a 
work  dealing  not  only  with  Paestum  and  its 
roses  but  with  mediaeval  Italy  and  its  effect 
upon  a  singularly  receptive  mind,  and  it  is  a 
book  that  will  not  fail  of  due  recognition. 

The  consent  of  Mr.  William  Aspenwall 
Bradley  to  reprint  his  poem  originally  con- 
tributed to  Putnam's  Magazine  is  gratefully 
acknowledged. 

T.  B.  M. 


ROSES    OF    PAESTUM 


PROEM  :  ALL'  ITALIA 

||ADY,  fair  lady,  lady  of  many  tears 
and  sighs  and  many  hearts'  ravish- 
ment !  Lo !  thou  hast  been  as  a 
Helen  among  the  nations ;  and  afire  with  thy 
beauty  lovers  have  come  from  many  lands 
to  possess  thee ;  and  they  have  striven  for 
thee,  and  their  blood  has  stained  thy  robes, 
and  they  have  died;  and  thou  hast  passed 
on  heart  free  despite  their  endeavours,  or  if 
indeed  possessed,  possessed  but  as  suppli- 
ants possess  the  courtyard  of  princes.  For 
they  came  of  old  thinking  to  win  kingdoms, 
those  fair-haired  Franks  and  Longobards ; 
and  thy  soft  airs  killed  remembrance,  and  the 
languor  of  contentment  unnerved  the  arm  of 
their  endeavour,  and  the  sword  that  had  won 
them  entrance  lay  idle  in  its  scabbard,  and 
their  pause  of  purpose  was  as  that  of  those 
who  thought  to  mate  with  Circe,  but  were 
found  pasturing  in  her  plesaunce  and  listening 
in  tranced  expectancy  to  her  singing,  witless 


4  Proem :  AW  Italia 

that  they  had  changed  and  their  hopes  with 
them,  forgetful  even  of  the  desire  of  attain- 
ment. 

Now  thou  art  subject  unto  none,  but  art 
sovereign,  and  thine  own  children  dwell  within 
thy  gates,  and  thou  art  one  of  the  rulers  of  the 
earth.  Yet  in  the  councils  of  princes  thou 
art  as  one  in  alien  air,  for  thy  kingdom  is  not 
as  other  kingdoms,  and  they  who  strove  with 
arms  to  possess  thee  knew  thee  not. 

Thou  art  sovereign,  and  thy  kingdom  is 
beauty,  and  as  men  love  beauty  so  they  love 
thee,  and  they  who  love  thee  are  thy  children. 

O  mother  of  many  children,  for  all  who 
seek  thee  thou  hast  gifts  in  store.  Thou  hast 
taught  thy  children  to  catch  the  blue  of  heaven 
and  mirror  it  in  the  dome  of  God's  house,  and 
to  paint  the  holy  mysteries  at  the  altars  with 
such  a  blending  of  sense  and  spirit  that  to  those 
who  look  upon  them  heaven  seems  nearer  and 
visions  float  before  their  eyes,  and  they  win 
foreknowledge.  To  some  thou  hast  given  to 
carve  marble  to  such  a  semblance  of  life  that 
the  thought  they  have  striven  to  express  has 
been  taken  captive  and  lain  in  toils  within  the 
stone. 


Proem:  AW  Italia  5 

To  poets  thou  hast  been  a  mighty  mother 
of  inspiration  from  the  days  of  thy  greatest 
son  who  sang  of  love  mystical,  and  was  led  by 
her  in  vision  through  hell  to  heaven ;  and 
ever  from  afar  have  come  the  singers  of  many 
lands  drawn  by  the  fame  of  thee,  with  the 
desire  of  beholding  thy  face,  and  thou  hast 
touched  their  lips  to  new  utterance. 

Others  have  come  seeking  of  thee  the  heal- 
ing gift  of  rest ;  and  to  many  thou  hast  given 
renewal  of  the  energy  of  life,  and  they  have 
returned  with  fresh  strength  to  their  purposes, 
with  strength  that  has  been  caught  from  the 
sunshine  of  thy  face ;  to  others  to  look  upon 
thee  is  as  the  opening  of  the  last  act  of  life's 
drama  —  a  tragedy  of  which  the  storm  and 
stress  are  past,  and  thy  gift  to  them  is  a  gift 
of  healing  —  the  healing  of  regret  and  the 
gift  of  peace  in  renunciation,  and  they  are 
contented  that  the  flame  be  stilled,  and  that 
thou  shouldst  hold  their  embers  and  their 
hopes  in  trust. 

Mother  most  bounteous,  gifts  hast  thou  in 
store  for  all  who  seek. 

Lo  1  I  come  seeking  thee,  O  give  me  thy 
gift. 


I 

ROSES  OF  PAESTUM 

GYPT  in  her  pride  had  sent  thee, 
Caesar,  winter  roses  as  a  rare  gift. 
But  as  the  sailor  from  Memphis  came 
near  to  thy  city  he  thought  scorn  of  the  gar- 
dens of  the  Pharaohs,  so  beautiful  was  Spring 
and  odorous  Flora's  grace,  and  the  glory  of 
our  Paestan  country,  so  sweetly  did  the  path- 
way blush  with  trailing  garlands  wherever  his 
glance  or  step  might  fall  in  his  wandering." 

And  Martial  asks  that  Egypt  should  rather 
henceforth  send  grain  and  take  roses,  seeing 
that  in  these  she  must  yield  the  palm  to  the 
Roman  winter. 

The -Roman  winter  has  still  its  eulogists, — 
it  is  hard  to  overstate  its  perennial  beauty ; 
but  the  supply  of  Paestan  roses  can  no  longer 
be  accounted  in  its  praise. 

The  glory  of  the  Paestan  country  is  still  a 
thing  to  wonder  at.  The  city  is  set  between 
the  mountains  and  the  sea.  Behind  it  the 


8  Roses  of  Paestum 

wild  glens  wind  steeply  to  the  huge  amphi- 
theatre of  the  Apennines,  whose  jagged  peaks 
strain  upwards  to  the  deep-blue  dome  of  the 
Calabrian  sky.  To  the  north  the  Gulf  of 
Salerno  is  broken  in  tiny  bays,  in  which  nestle 
Positano  and  Amalfi,  and  above  the  latter 
Ravello  is  seen  gleaming  proudly  on  its  height. 
A  meadow  lies  between  the  city  and  the  sea, 
and  across  the  bay  the  eye  rests  on  the 
islands  of  the  Sirens,  and  Capri. 

The  city  was  founded  by  Greek  colonists 
from  Sybaris  in  about  600  B.  c.  It  remained 
practically  a  Greek  city  after  becoming  sub- 
ject to  the  native  Lucanians,  and  we  are  told 
that  the  inhabitants  were  wont  to  assemble 
every  year  to  lament  their  captivity  and  recall 
the  memory  of  their  greatness.  Posidonia 
became  Paestum,  and  flourished  under  Roman 
rule.  Her  legions  took  part  in  the  Punic 
wars,  but  her  famed  arts  were  ever  those  of 
peace.  Virgil  as  well  as  Martial  tells  of  her 
flowery  gardens,  and  of  the  roses  that  bloomed 
both  in  spring  .and  autumn  "biferique  Rosaria 
Paesti"  ;  and  whenever  Roman  poets  singing 
of  the  rose  were  minded  that  she  should  be 
known  of  local  habitation,  it  was  for  the  most 


Roses  of  Paestum  9 

part  in  Paestan  gardens  that  they  gathered 
her;  so  that  the  roses  of  Paestum  became 
known  as  emblems  of  her  beauty.  Life 
receded  from  the  city  in  the  latter  days  of  the 
Empire,  and  finally  the  Saracens  sacked  and 
devastated  it,  and  the  Normans,  a  century 
later,  under  Robert  Guiscard  carried  off  all 
that  they  could  carry  of  its  sculpture  to 
Salerno  and  Amalfi,  there  founding  cathedrals 
with  marble  from  its  temples.  The  mouth  of 
the  river  Silarus  meanwhile  had  silted  up, 
and  the  plain  had  become  a  marsh,  stagnant 
and  miasmal. 

The  city  now  is  a  solitude.  A  few  frag- 
ments of  the  ancient  walls  and  the  lower  part 
of  one  of  the  gates  remain ;  —  yet  the  little 
that  is  left  of  what  the  Romans  built  seems 
new,  and,  like  the  few  modern  houses  of 
Pesto,  seems  to  shrink  away  in  timidity  before 
the  three  Greek  temples  whose  huge  colon- 
nades tower  majestically  to  the  horizon. 
They  lie  facing  the  sea  and  the  sunset  robed 
in  the  awful  beauty  of  desolation  and  decay, 
— timeless  monuments  of  an  immemorial  past. 
Of  the  three,  the  temple  of  Poseidon  is  at  once 
the  oldest,  the  largest,  and  the  most  complete. 


io  Roses  of  Paestum 

"New  Gods  are  crowned  in  the  city"  —  or 
were  in  the  years  before  the  city  became  a 
solitude  peopled  only  by  marbles  and  memories. 
New  temples  of  strange  worship  were  set 
beside  this  temple  of  Poseidon ;  and  from 
these,  too,  the  flame  of  human  veneration  has 
passed,  and  the  altars  have  been  bared  of 
sacrifice  and  votive  offering,  and  they  have 
passed  away  with  the  passing  of  the  life  that 
dwelt  beneath  their  shadow.  Immutable,  the 
temple  of  the  sea-god  has  been  witness  of 
their  coming  and  departing,  and  by  its  con- 
trast with  their  transience  it  would  seem  that 
beneath  the  surges  that  murmur  to  the 
meadow,  the  god  still  lies  in  power,  potent  as 
of  old  to  guard  his  sanctuary. 

There  is  a  fascination  and  a  sense  of  con- 
tent in  the  scene  which  is  in  itself  a  recognition 
of  the  supreme,  the  inevitable  beauty  with 
which  nature  has  encompassed  the  desolate 
temples. 

The  sunlight  is  as  a  wand  of  enchantment 
wonder-working;  the  air  quivers  golden  to 
the  alchemy  of  its  touch ;  the  smitten  facets 
of  the  marble  gleam  and  glister  with  hues 
iridescent.  Wild  flowers  spring  luxuriant 


ftoses  of  Pacstum  n 

from  the  crevices  of  the  columns ;  lizards 
slumber  on  the  stones ;  all  around  is  heard 
incessantly  the  dry  chirp  chirp  of  the  cicalas ; 
and  in  the  meadow  to  seaward  herds  of  oxen 
wrench  the  long  coarse  grasses.  Sun-steeped 
nature  covers  the  footprints  of  the  past,  yet 
her  beauty  hides  not  —  rather  enforces  —  that 
they  are  footprints  and  they  are  desolate. 
Cicalas  sing  where  once  was  the  music  of 
many  voices  ;  acanthus  now  where  once  grew 
roses ;  and  of  the  rose-gardens  whereof  the 
Roman  poets  sang  no  vestige  remains. 

They  are  in  thought  fair  to  dwell  upon,  and 
they  call  a  fair  picture  before  us,  the  long 
festoons  of  roses  trailing  around  balconies  or 
gardens.  Nestling  amid  their  fragrance,  lovers 
would  sit  at  nightfall  and  listen  to  some 
singer  from  Syracuse.  Perhaps  as  the  singing 
ceased  they  would  wander  together  in  the 
moonlight  down  the  long  colonnades  and  look 
over  the  sea  to  the  isles  of  the  Sirens  dark 
and  tremulous  in  the  evening  air;  and  stay 
awhile,  silently,  hearing  the  murmur  of  the 
stillest  wave,  the  one  pitying  all  those  mariners 
who  had  been  lured  to  death,  the  other  think- 
ing of  that  strange  mastering  music  which  had 


12  Roses  of  Paestum 

drawn  all  men  unto  it  until  Ulysses'  ship 
passed  by  unheedingly  and  the  singers  perished 
and  the  rocks  were  silent,  wondering,  may  be, 
if  the  sea  had  memory  and  in  its  voice  lived 
their  song  imperishable  ;  and  then  they  would 
turn  and  wander  back  among  the  roses  and 
think  no  more  upon  death. 

Fantasies— woven  of  dream!  Imaginings 
—  of  days  that  are  dead  to  memory  !  Yet  the 
Greek  city  by  the  bay  of  Salerno  must  have 
witnessed  many  such  scenes  in  the  days  of 
the  roses'  flowering. 

As  the  ivy  round  the  oak  so  legend  twines 
its  tendrils  around  history,  clinging  to  and 
supported  by  its  strength,  yet  chapleting  it 
with  leaves  undying  after  that  its  sap  has 
departed,  distaining  or  denying  the  touch  of 
death.  So  when  legend  drawn  by  the  grandeur 
of  their  deeds  has  twined  her  tendrils  around 
the  names  of  kings  and  warriors,  her  contest 
with  death  is  not  for  their  memory  alone,  she 
tells  rather  that  they  are  not  dead  but  fallen 
asleep,  and  that  in  the  fulness  of  time  they 
will  awaken.  So  Arthur  "  Rex  quondam 
Rexque  futurus  "  abides  in  Avilion  to  be  healed 
of  his  wound,  and  "men  say  that  he  shall 


Roses  of  Pa e stum  13 

come  again  and  he  shall  win  the  holy  cross  "  ; 
so  Charlemagne,  and  Barbarossa,  sleeping  in 
his  mountain  fastness  —  they  will  awaken, 
legends  say,  in  the  hour  of  need. 

As  with  kings  exalted  above  their  compeers 
in  prowess,  so  with  the  flower  of  flowers, 

"  Ut  Rosa  flos  florum 
Sic  Arthurus  rex  regum," 

and  the  roses  of  Paestum,  the  roses  of  Greek 
beauty  growing  on  Italian  soil,  in  Virgil  "the 
rose  twice-flowering,"  "biferique  Rosaria 
Paesti,"  passed  not  into  memory  when  their 
gardens  were  forsaken.  They  were  upgathered 
of  the  immortal  spirit  of  beauty,  and  lay  in 
slumber  until  the  fulness  of  the  time  of  reflow- 
ering,  when  in  the  valley  of  the  Arno  all  the 
arts  resurgent  were  one  harmony  of  joy  and 
thanksgiving. 

To  consider  the  second  flowering  of  the 
roses  we  must  leave  the  Greek  city,  deserted 
and  finally  despoiled  by  the  Normans,  and 
pass  to  Pisa. 

Pisa  in  the  twelfth  century  was  the  mistress 
of  the  Tyrrhene  sea.  Her  supremacy  extended 
along  the  coast  from  Spezia  to  the  port  of 


14  Roses  of  Paestum 

Rome.  Her  grandeur  in  its  zenith  is  perhaps 
only  comparable  in  its  conditions  to  that  of 
Venice  two  centuries  later.  She  took  part  in 
the  Crusades  and  had  great  trade  with  the 
East.  She  had  won  from  the  Saracens  Sar- 
dinia and  the  Balearic  Isles,  and  had  defeated 
their  fleets  off  Tunis  and  Palermo. 

Ever  Ghibelline,  ready  to  fight  the  Emperor's 
feuds  as  well  as  her  own,  she  warred  with  all 
her  neighbours  and  especially  with  the  other 
maritime  republics.  "  The  mad  little  sea- 
falcon  never  caught  sight  of  another  water-bird 
on  the  wing  but  she  must  hawk  at  it ; "  and 
after  the  fall  of  the  Hohenstaufen  she  was  at 
last  subdued  on  the  sea  by  her  inveterate  and 
often  defeated  foe  Genoa,  at  the  battle  of 
Meloria. 

Her  fleets  returning  in  the  days  of  her 
triumph,  brought  back  spoil  and  art  treasure: 
the  Pandects  of  Justinian  from  Amalfi,  earth 
from  Palestine  that  her  dead  might  rest  in  her 
Campo  Santo,  marble  sculpture  from  the  East, 
from  Sicily,  and  from  various  parts  of  the 
peninsula  to  adorn  her  cathedral,  which  she 
had  built  in  memory  of  her  victory  over  the 
Saracens  off  Palermo. 


Roses  of  Pacstum  15 

Among  this  sculpture  was  a  sarcophagus 
with  two  scenes  in  bas-relief  from  the  story  of 
Phaedra  and  Hippolytus,  which  for  many 
centuries  stood  beside  one  of  the  doors  of  the 
Cathedral.  It  there  served  as  the  tomb  of 
Beatrice  of  Lorraine,  the  mother  of  the 
Countess  Matilda  of  Tuscany  who  has  been 
by  some  identified  with  the  Matelda  whom 
Dante  saw  beyond  the  stream  of  Lethe  walk- 
ing in  a  meadow  singing  and  gathering  flowers, 
and  who  became  his  guide  through  the 
Terrestrial  Paradise. 

The  custom  of  using  these  sarcophagi  as 
Christian  tombs  was  not  infrequent,  and  there 
are  similar  sculptured  sarcophagi  in  the 
Cathedrals  of  Amalfi  and  Salerno. 

These,  together  with  the  numerous  marble 
columns  of  atrium  and  campanile,  were 
undoubtedly  taken  from  Paestum ;  and  it  is 
perhaps  permissible  —  theorizing  where  record 
can  neither  substantiate  nor  confute  —  to 
assign  to  the  relief  of  Phaedra  and  Hippolytus 
the  same  place  of  origin.  The  Pandects  were 
in  all  probability  not  the  only  trophy  which 
the  Pisans  carried  away  after  their  victory 
over  Amalfi,  and  we  know  that  sculptured 


1 6  Roses  of  Paestum 

reliefs  from  Paestum  were  there  ready  to  their 
hand. 

The  sarcophagus,  whether  from  Paestum 
or  elsewhere,  is  carved  in  the  classical  Greek 
manner,  and  Vasari  tells  us  that  as  it  stood 
by  the  door  of  the  Cathedral  it  drew  the 
attention  of  Niccola  Pisano,  who  was  working 
there  under  some  Byzantine  masters.  "Nic- 
cola was  attracted  by  the  excellence  of  this 
work,  in  which  he  greatly  delighted,  and 
which  he  studied  diligently,  with  the  many 
other  valuable  sculptures  of  the  relics  around 
him,  imitating  the  admirable  manner  of  these 
works  with  so  much  success,  that  no  long  time 
had  elapsed  before  he  was  esteemed  the  best 
sculptor  of  his  time." 

There  is  nothing  sensational  about  this 
statement,  and  its  moderation  may  incline  us 
to  accept  it  without  cavil  on  the  much  vexed 
question  of  Vasari's  inaccuracies. 

Niccola  Pisano  was  destined  to  be  the 
founder  of  a  new  school  of  sculpture,  but  he 
was  then  an  apprentice,  and  like  Cimabue  in 
his  youth,  was  studying  his  art  under  Byzantine 
masters,  who  were  then  the  best  exponents  of 
the  arts  of  design ;  and  this  is  invariably  the 


Roses  of  Paestum  17 

way  in  which  genius  prepares  itself  for  active 
service,  —  there  is  no  rupture  in  tradition,  the 
old  is  assimilated  and  then  the  step  forward 
is  made. 

He  saw  in  the  Greek  reliefs  a  precision  of 
touch,  a  feeling  of  dignity  and  beauty  which 
surpassed  anything  that  his  Byzantine  masters 
had  attained  to  in  their  works. 

Still  working  we  presume  with  the  Byzan- 
tines, he  added  a  new  teacher,  and  served  a 
new  apprenticeship  to  the  work  of  this  unknown 
Greek.  Athena  issued  forth  from  the  head 
of  Zeus  fully  armed  and  equipped,  but  the 
votaries  of  her  arts  know  no  such  perfection 
of  birth  —  for  them  toil  ever  precedes  achieve- 
ment. So  after  studying  the  reliefs  diligently, 
he  began  to  try  to  copy  bits  of  them,  at  first 
probably  with  no  success  at  all,  still  he  kept 
on,  for  he  knew  there  was  something  to  learn 
from  this  carving  if  he  could  only  learn  it; 
and  his  attempts  at  imitation  grew  a  little  bit 
like,  and  then  more  like,  until  finally  he  found 
he  could  carve  heads  quite  like  those  on  the 
sarcophagus  if  he  wanted  to,  and  vary  them  a 
bit  if  he  didn't,  although  if  he  varied  them 
the  faces  were  still  Greek  and  not  Pisan,  and 


1 8  Roses  of  Paestum 

they  probably  looked  altogether  nicer  than  the 
originals  because  they  were  not  weather-stained 
or  lacking  any  hands  or  noses  through  the 
mischances  of  time  and  travel. 

When  the  Pisans  saw  what  Niccola  could 
do  they  employed  him  to  make  a  pulpit  for 
the  Baptistery,  and  this  he  completed  in  1260, 
being  then  about  fifty-five  years  of  age.  It  is 
perhaps  the  most  beautiful  work  of  its  kind  in 
Italy,  and  has  for  rival  only  Niccola's  own 
subsequent  work  at  Siena.  It  is  hexagonal, 
built  entirely  of  white  marble,  the  angles 
resting  on  Corinthian  pillars  which  alternately 
descend  to  the  ground  or  are  carried  on  the 
backs  of  lions ;  from  their  capitals  spring 
tref oiled  arches,  and  above  these,  on  five  of 
the  sides  of  the  hexagon,  are  bas-reliefs  of  the 
Nativity,  the  Adoration  of  the  Kings,  the 
Presentation  in  the  Temple,  the  Crucifixion, 
and  the  Last  Judgment. 

Dignified  in  conception,  restrained  in  man- 
ner, antique  in  the  stateliness  of  its  beauty,  it 
seems  rather  the  work  of  one  on  whose  ears 
echoes  of  the  past  have  fallen  so  that  he  seeks 
to  reawaken  and  recreate  her  lost  delight, 
than  of  one  whose  work  was  destined  to  be  a 


Roses  of  Paestum  19 

guide  and  an  ensample  to  future  generations; 
and  yet  it  would  be  hard  to  point  to  any  statue 
or  painting  executed  in  the  whole  extent  of 
Italy,  from  the  Alpine  valleys  of  Piedmont  to 
the  sun-steeped  plains  of  Calabria,  which  can 
vie  with  this  sculptured  pulpit  of  Niccola 
Pisano,  standing  now  in  the  Baptistery  of  Pisa 
as  it  has  stood  for  over  six  hundred  years,  in 
its  claim  to  be  considered  as  the  first  com- 
pleted endeavour  of  renascent  Italian  art. 

For  in  these  bas-reliefs,  five  years  before 
the  birth  of  Dante,  sixteen  years  before  the 
birth  of  Giotto,  were  exemplified  the  principles 
which  the  genius  of  both  was  to  illustrate, — 
that  the  study  of  the  antique  was  to  win  back 
the  beauty  of  its  ideal  to  the  service  of  the 
present, — that  fidelity  to  nature  —  the  spirits 
in  the  Antepurgatory  perceiving  from  Dante's 
breath  that  he  was  alive,  gathering  round  in 
wonder  as  the  multitude  flock  round  a  herald 
to  hear  what  news  he  brings :  or  the  hind  in 
the  fresco  at  Assisi,  who  on  hands  and  knees 
and  with  all  the  eagerness  of  thirst  is  drinking 
the  water  that  springs  from  the  rock :  or  the 
goat  scratching  his  ear,  in  the  bas-relief  of 
the  Nativity,  —  that  this  fidelity  to  nature, 


1O  Roses  of  Paestum 

this  truth  in  common  things,  was  as  an  open 
sesame  to  win  for  the  arts  entrance  in  the 
minds  of  men,  and  that  the  first  fruits  were 
dedicate  to  the  service  of  God. 

Comparing  Niccola's  work  with  his  models, 
we  see  that  the  Phaedra  of  the  sarcophagus 
has  suggested  the  Madonna  in  the  Adoration 
of  the  Kings,  and  that  the  high  priest  in  the 
Presentation  is  the  Bacchus  of  an  antique 
sculptured  vase  in  the  Campo  Santo.  In 
these  metamorphoses  we  may  see  a  forecast 
of  how  the  later  exuberance  of  the  quest  for 
beauty  was  to  blend  unheedingly  things  incon- 
gruous,—  things  pertaining  to  Christ  and 
things  pertaining  to  Diana — grouping  reliefs 
of  the  story  of  the  Fall  and  of  Hercules  and 
the  Centaur  around  the  same  baptismal  font ; 
and  they  are  a  forecast,  too,  of  how,  when  art 
was  netted  in  the  toils  of  her  own  magnifi- 
cence, and  the  wings  of  aspiration  no  longer 
strained  up  to  heaven,  Phaedra  and  Bacchus 
came  back  as  witnesses  of  her  abasement  to 
leer  and  make  revel  among  the  ruins,  tempting 
Josephs  and  Susannahs  on  the  canvases  of 
Bronzino  and  Biliverti. 

Were  it  not  for  the  resemblances  and  for 


Roses  of  Paestum  21 

the  history  attaching  to  them,  we  should  not 
perhaps  linger  long  to  look  at  the  Greek 
marbles  in  Pisa.  They  would  be  passed  by 
almost  unnoticed  among  the  treasures  of  the 
Vatican  or  the  Capitoline;  but  these  for  the 
most  part  the  Roman  earth  still  covered. 

Two  hundred  years  and  more  of  unabated 
effort  were  to  elapse,  the  impulse  given  by 
Niccola  Pisano  was  to  animate  his  successors, 
and  to  win  new  attainment  of  beauty  and 
truth  under  Ghiberti  and  Donatello,  and  then 
in  the  fulness  of  time,  in  the  dawn  of  the 
golden  age  of  the  Renaissance,  the  master 
works  of  Greek  sculpture  which  lay  buried 
beneath  Rome  or  in  the  ruins  of  the  Cam- 
pagna  were  uncovered,  and  to  Michael  Angelo, 
studying  the  Laocoon,  the  Apollo  Belvedere, 
and  the  Dying  Gladiator,  something  of  their 
sublime  mastery  was  revealed,  even  as  Niccola 
Pisano  had  learnt  his  simpler  lesson  from  the 
Phaedra  and  Hippolytus. 

Like  spring's  first  harbingers,  which,  bursting 
the  sod  too  early,  are  nipped  by  winter's  chill, 
yet  in  their  brief  coming  are  a  token  and  a 
promise,  —  so  the  golden  age  of  Pisa  was  a 
precursor  of  the  glory  of  the  Renaissance. 


22  Roses  of  Paestum 

The  sceptre  of  the  arts  passed  from  her 
while  her  fleets  and  armies  were  still  potent, 
and  Florence  became  the  heir  of  her  tradi- 
tions, as  at  a  later  period  of  her  sovereignty. 

The  immediate  followers  of  Niccola  Pisano 
had  no  succession  among  her  children,  and 
when  the  structure  of  the  Campo  Santo 
was  completed  by  Giovanni  Pisano  in  1283 
she  was  constrained  to  invite  artists  from 
Florence  and  Siena  to  paint  the  cloisters  in 
fresco. 

In  Niccola's  pulpit  we  see  the  transplanting 
of  the  roses  of  Greek  beauty,  the  establishing 
of  a  rose-garden  by  the  banks  of  the  Arno,  the 
fresh  green  of  leaves  budding,  but  it  is  in  Flor- 
ence that  we  must  seek  the  second  flowering, 
—  the  bloom  of  the  perfected  rose. 

Entering  the  gallery  of  the  Uffizi,  and  pass- 
ing down  the  Eastern  and  Southern  Corridors 
amidst  Byzantine  and  Tuscan  Madonnas,  an- 
tique reliefs  and  busts  of  Emperors,  you  reach 
the  hall  of  Lorenzo  Monaco,  so  named  as  con- 
taining the  "  Coronation  of  the  Virgin "  of 
Don  Lorenzo,  monk  of  the  Camaldoline  mon- 
astery of  the  Angeli,  and  forerunner  of  Fra 
Angelico  in  simplicity  and  grace. 


Roses  of  Paesium  23 

There  are  also  a  tabernacle  by  Fra  Angelico 
of  Madonna  and  Saints  surrounded  as  by  a 
nimbus  by  angels  playing  musical  instruments  ; 
a  panel  of  saints  by  Gentile  da  Fabriano, 
and  a  few  Quattrocento  Florentine  pictures, 
amongst  them  two  by  Botticelli,  —  "  The  Ado- 
ration of  the  Magi,"  and  "  The  Birth  of  Venus." 
The  latter  of  these  let  us  attempt  to  consider 
in  detail.  It  represents  Venus  rising  from  the 
sea  off  the  island  of  Cythera. 

A  pale  green  sea  —  faintly  tremulous  with 
wind-ripples.  To  the  left  of  the  picture,  hov- 
ering in  the  air  with  long  wings  outspread,  are 
two  spirits  symbolic  of  the  winds.  The  cheeks 
of  Eolus  are  distent,  and  his  breath,  visible  as 
a  pale  shaft  of  light,  is  impelling  Venus  to 
shore.  Her  feet  are  resting  on  the  gold-prank'd 
edge  of  a  scallop  shell,  and  the  waves  are  dan- 
cing before  it  as  it  moves  onward.  She  is  tall, 
fair,  virginal,  undraped,  save  for  the  clinging 
folds  of  her  long,  yellow  hair.  The  mytholog- 
ical details  might  lead  us  to  expect  a  nymph 
or  nereid,  —  soulless,  elemental,  looking  out 
on  mankind  with  something  of  that  expression, 
half  of  mockery,  half  of  delight,  which  Arnold 
Bocklin's  nymphs  possess; — but  the  face  is 


24  Roses  of  Paestum 

tender  and  pensive  as  ever  was  that  of 
Madonna.  But  the  tenderness  of  Madonna  is 
tenderness  of  love  revealed,  arms  encircling 
the  child  and  eyes  lit  with  the  holy  light  of 
motherhood,  and  this  is  the  tenderness  of 
expectancy,  the  tenderness  of  dawn  such  as 
must  have  been  upon  the  face  of  just-awak- 
ened Eve, 

"Beneath  her  Maker*  s  finger,  when  the  fresh 
First  pulse  of  life  shot  brightening  the  snow" 

for  Venus,  elemental  and  a  goddess,  is  like 
Eve  coming  to  earth  and  vernal  delight.  It 
is  the  garden  of  earth  where  she  is  landing. 
The  receding  line  of  distance  where  the  sea 
meets  the  shore  is  fretted  with  tiny  bays,  and 
verdant  with  sloping  hills.  On  the  right  is  a 
laurel  grove,  and  before  it  a  lady,  symbolic  of 
Spring,  hastens  to  meet  the  goddess,  holding 
in  outstretched  hands  a  red  robe  richly  en- 
wrought  with  daisies  which  gleam  upon  its 
folds  in  white  emblazonry.  The  robe  is  flut- 
tering in  the  breath  of  the  wind  that  wafts  the 
goddess  to  shore. 

In  the  foreground  to  the  left  a  few  bulrushes 
are  swaying.     The   stems  of  the  laurels  are 


Roses  of  Pacstum  25 

sparkling  with  gold,  and  the  sward  gleams 
golden  where  Venus'  feet  will  tread.  Spring 
is  clad  in  a  white  robe  worked  with  cornflow- 
ers, a  spray  of  olive  lies  lightly  on  her  breast, 
and  her  waist  is  girdled  with  roses. 

To  the  left  of  the  picture  there  are  many 
roses  falling.  Pale  pink  roses  of  hue  scarce 
deeper  than  the  lilied  flesh  of  Venus,  some 
upturned  with  the  heart  of  the  rose  laid  bare, 
some  the  winds  have  tilted  over  and  they  make 
a  Narcissus'  mirror  of  the  sea,  roses  full  blown 
and  buds  half-opened,  they  cling  to  the  wings 
and  streaming  raiment  of  the  winds,  they  lie 
upon  their  limbs,  they  flutter  softly  downwards, 
they  are  wafted  to  the  shore,  some  hurrying 
joyously,  some  wantonly  dallying  with  the  rip- 
ples of  the  air.  A  rain  of  roses,  and  the  very 
air  that  attends  their  falling  seems  to  murmur 
of  it. 

They  are  the  roses  of  Paestum  coming  back 
again  ;  this  is  the  manner  of  their  second  flow- 
ering. For  the  delight  of  the  antique  world  in 
the  presentment  of  loveliness,  —  a  delight 

"  not  yet  dead 
But  in  old  marbles  ever  beautiful " 


26  Roses  of  Pa e stum 

slept  prisoned  in  marble  no  longer,  but  issued 
forth  in  newness  of  life  in  the  Renaissance,  and 
it  was  in  the  pictures  of  Botticelli  that  it  found 
expression  at  once  most  joyous  and  most  com- 
plete. Mantegna  is  indeed  in  a  sense  more 
classical,  but  in  Botticelli  this  delight  is  a  liv- 
ing reality.  For  he  was  the  only  painter  of 
Italy  who,  as  Ruskin  says,  "  understood  the 
thoughts  of  Heathens  and  Christians  equally, 
and  could  in  a  measure  paint  both  Aphrodite 
and  the  Madonna."  And  understanding  the 
thoughts  of  both,  there  is  in  him  no  attempt  to 
blend  things  incongruous.  To  each  their  gifts 
are  rendered  —  unto  Caesar  and  unto  God. 
Myths  from  Politian  by  his  art  made  palaces 
of  enchantment  of  the  villas  of  the  Medici, 
and  from  Lucian's  lines  he  recreated  the  "  Cal- 
umny "  of  Apelles.  Sixtus  IV  sent  for  him  to 
Rome,  and  in  the  Sistine  Chapel  he  painted 
with  Perugino,  Pinturicchio,  Signorelli,  and 
others  of  his  contemporaries,  scenes  from  the 
lives  of  Moses  and  of  Christ. 

As  all  the  greatest  of  artists,  alike  in  paint- 
ing and  in  poetry,  when  of  an  age  he  was  of 
his  own  age,  —  when  local,  then  of  his  own 
city,  Florence,  —  when  he  needed  bystanders, 


Roses  of  Paestum  27 

then  these,  as  in  the  "Adoration  of  the  Magi," 
Florentines,  —  his  contemporaries  and  himself 
among  them;  but  the  Madonna  of  the  "  Mag- 
nificat "  and  alike  sea-born  Venus  are  neither 
Jewish  nor  Greek  nor  yet  Florentine,  but  time- 
less according  to  the  measure  of  his  ability  to 
paint  the  faiths  that  were  in  him,  and  to  us  in 
the  measure  of  our  faiths  they  are  realities. 

In  the  later  years  of  his  life  he  gave  up  paint- 
ing Venus  and  the  Spring,  and  finally  gave  up 
the  use  of  the  brush  altogether,  though  still  for 
a  time,  as  we  shall  see,  drawing  roses.  After 
completing  his  work  in  the  Sistine  Chapel  he 
returned  to  Florence,  and  there,  says  Vasari, 
"  being  whimsical  and  eccentric,  he  occupied 
himself  with  commenting  on  a  certain  part  of 
Dante,  illustrating  the  '  Inferno,'  and  execut- 
ing prints  over  which  he  wasted  much  time, 
and,  neglecting  his  proper  occupation,  he  did 
no  work,  and  thereby  caused  infinite  disorder 
in  his  affairs.  Yet  despite  Vasari  not  alto- 
gether idle,  nor  assuredly  the  less  great  of 
spirit  in  that  he  thus  stood  outside  his  art's 
achievement  and  would  fain  "  put  to  proof  art 
alien  to  the  artist's  "  in  utterance  of  his  thought. 
Even  so  "  Rafael  made  a  century  of  sonnets," 


28  Roses  of  Paestum 

and  "  Dante  once  prepared  to  paint  an  angel." 
His  rarer  utterance  is  as  theirs  extinguished. 
He  was  taunted,  Vasari  tells  us,  with  his  unfit- 
ness,  in  that  he  "  without  a  grain  of  learning, 
scarcely  knowing  how  to  read,  had  undertaken 
to  make  a  commentary  on  Dante."  Yet  we 
would  gladly,  if  we  could,  barter  with  time  the 
writings  of  a  good  many  of  Dante's  commen- 
tators in  exchange  for  this  same  volume. 

We  are  told  that  he  afterwards  became  one 
of  the  followers  of  Savonarola,  and  as  such 
totally  abandoned  the  practice  of  his  art  and 
became  a  Piagnone  (a  mourning  brother),  and 
in  his  old  age  in  poverty  and  a  cripple  he 
lived  on  the  charity  of  Lorenzo  de'  Medici, 
and  of  others  who  had  known  him  in  the  days 
of  his  prosperity. 

Time,  while  robbing  us  of  his  commentary 
on  Dante,  has  dealt  with  us  more  kindly  as 
regards  the  illustrations.  They  relate  not  only 
to  the  "  Inferno,"  as  Vasari  would  lead  one  to 
suppose,  but  to  the  whole  of  the  "  Divine  Com- 
edy "  with  the  exception  of  a  few  cantos,  and 
have  a  unique  interest  as  being  the  only  sur- 
viving illustrations  of  Dante  by  an  artist  of 
the  Renaissance.  Michael  Angelo  is  said  to 


Noses  of  Pa e stum  29 

have  made  a  similar  book  of  drawings,  which 
was  lost  at  sea  in  a  storm  in  the  Gulf  of  Lyons. 

One  of  these  drawings,  seems  reminiscent  in 
certain  likenesses  and  contrasts  of  the  picture 
in  the  Uffizi. 

The  subject  is  Beatrice  appearing  to  Dante 
in  Canto  XXX  of  the  "  Purgatorio." 

Dante  and  Statius  have  reached  the  Ter- 
restrial Paradise,  and  are  walking  beside  the 
stream  of  Lethe  conversing  with  Matelda  in 
the  meadow  beyond.  The  mystical  Proces- 
sion of  the  Church,  approaching  amid  the 
forest,  heralded  by  gleaming  light  and  melody, 
has  unfolded  before  them.  The  triumphal  car 
of  the  Church  drawn  by  the  Gryphon  has 
halted.  The  twenty-four  elders  have  turned  to 
face  it.  They  are  crowned  with  lilies  and  are 
bearing  aloft  the  books  of  their  testimony.  One 
of  them,  Dante  tells  us,  chants  "  Veni  Sponsa 
de  Libano"  and  the  rest  take  up  the  strain, 
and  a  hundred  angels'  voices  are  heard  sing- 
ing "  Benedictus  qui  venis"  and  "Manibus  o 
date  Hlia plenis"  as  they  scatter  flowers  about 
the  car.  Behind  the  elders  are  the  bearers  of 
the  seven  candlesticks,  and  the  long  tongues 
of  flame  lie  in  the  air  as  bands  of  light,  and 


30  Roses  of  Paestum 

between  them  rise  the  upward  sweeping  wings 
of  the  Gryphon.  Around  the  car  the  seven 
virtues  are  as  maidens  dancing,  and  behind  it 
walk  seven  elders,  their  temples  crowned  with 
roses,  among  whom  walks  St.  John  in  the 
ecstasy  of  sleep.  In  the  car  stands  Beatrice, 

"  In  white  veil  with  olive  wreathed 
A  virgin  in  my  view  appeared,  beneath 
Green  mantle,  robed  in  hue  of  living  flame" 

The  car  is  the  scallop  shell ;  the  elders  and 
the  virtues  are  the  attendant  spirits,  and  they 
too  are  ministrant  upon  a  lady  of  love  ;  but 
her  brows  are  touched  by  the  fadeless  olive 
emblem  of  wisdom  and  of  peace. 

The  scallop  shell  is  wafted  by  the  winds  to 
shore,  but  here  the  river  divides,  and  it  is  we 
who  must  make  the  passage.  Dante  is  stand- 
ing with  hands  clasped  together  and  eyes  down- 
cast. He  has  looked  down  in  the  depths  of 
the  river,  but  from  thence  his  eyes  recoil  in 
shame  seeing  his  own  image,  and  seek  rather 
the  grasses  at  his  feet ;  for  it  is  the  river  of  the 
forgetting  of  sin,  and  his  eyes  are  heavy  and 
laden  with  memories,  and  cannot  as  yet  endure 
to  meet  the  vision  of  the  radiance.  Beyond  the 


Roses  of  Paestum  31 

river  all  around  the  car,  flowers  are  falling. 
"Manibus  o  date  lilia  pkn is,"  —  (scatter  ye  lil- 
ies with  hands  unsparing)  —  by  a  strange  but 
beautiful  transition  the  words  uttered  by  An- 
chises  over  the  bier  of  the  young  Marcellus 
are  sung  by  angels'  voices  as  they  scatter  flow- 
ers upon  the  car  of  Beatrice.  Not  death  this 
but  life,  says  Botticelli  in  his  drawing,  nor  alone 
the  pale  white  of  purity,  but  the  fervour  of  love 
divine  and  eternal,  and  the  flowers  which  the 
angels  are  scattering  are  not  lilies  alone,  but 
also  roses,  roses  —  not  of  Paestum  but  of 
Paradise. 

Of  the  falling  roses  in  the  picture  in  the 
Uffizi  of  the  "  Birth  of  Venus  "  some  will  flut- 
ter to  shore,  and  as  they  die  the  seed  of  beauty 
will  break  from  the  heart  of  the  rose,  and  the 
wind  will  bear  it  to  a  soil  where  it  may  live. 
So  the  roses  that  were  blown  to  shore  on  Eolus' 
breath  have  given  the  seeds  of  many  roses ; 
and  changed  a  little  by  change  of  environment, 
they  flowered  for  long  in  Italy,  and  some  who 
have  visited  the  garden  of  their  second  flower- 
ing have  gathered  the  seed  and  carried  it,  so 
that  it  has  flowered  in  Northern  climes  and  is 
still  flowering.  Yet  withal,  their  beauty  seems 


32  Roses  of  Pacstum 

never  so  supreme  as  in  this  the  first  season  of 
their  second  flowering  in  that  perfect  freshness 
of  the  just-awakened  rose,  and  so  Botticelli 
has  painted  them  as  spirits  in  attendance  on 
Love,  so  that  coming  to  earth  she  may  be 
reconciled. 


II 


THE  VITA  NUOVA 

>N  Boccaccio's  life  of  Dante  he  says 
that  it  was  customary  in  Florence,  in 
the  spring  of  the  year  when  the  earth 
was  all  aflower  with  beauty,  for  the  citizens  to 
gather  together  in  festival ;  and  so  it  happened 
that  on  the  ist  of  May  Folco  Portinari,  a  man 
of  considerable  position,  invited  his  neighbours 
to  his  house  to  a  banquet,  and  amongst  them 
his  neighbour  Alighieri,  Dante's  father,  and  as 
even  small  children  accompanied  their  parents 
to  these  festivals  Dante  went  with  him,  although 
he  was  only  nine  years  old.  There  he  met  a 
number  of  other  children  of  about  his  own  age, 
and  they  had  the  first  few  courses  of  the  ban- 
quet and  then  played  games  together.  Amongst 
the  others  was  Folco's  daughter  Beatrice,— 
or,  as  she  was  always  called,  Bice  —  a  graceful 
little  child  of  about  eight  years  old,  full  of  ten- 
derness and  winsome  ways,  perhaps  a  little 
more  demure  and  serious  in  speech  than  one 


34  The  Vita  Nuova 

would  have  expected  at  her  age  :  her  features 
were  refined  and  regular :  beautiful,  but  so 
touched  with  grace  and  charm  that  to  many 
thinking  of  her  it  seemed  as  though  she  were 
almost  one  of  the  angels. 

"Even  so  —  or  how  much  fairer  than  I  can 
tell  —  did  she  seem  to  Dante's  eyes  at  this 
banquet,  perhaps  not  then  beheld  for  the  first 
time,  but  then  first  potent  to  awaken  love  ;  and 
although  she  was  still  a  child,  he  took  her  fair 
image  to  his  heart  with  such  affection  that  from 
that  day  onwards  it  never  departed  all  the  days 
of  his  life." 

1°  Z373>  more  than  fifty  years  after  Dante's 
death,  the  Florentines  established  a  public 
lectureship  on  the  "  Divina  Commedia,"  and 
Boccaccio  held  the  office  until  his  death  two 
years  later.  His  lectures  were  a  commentary 
on  the  "  Inferno,"  and  in  a  note  on  the  first 
mention  of  Beatrice  he  says  —  and  the  state- 
ment is  confirmed  in  another  commentary  sup- 
posed to  be  by  Dante's  son  Pietro  :  "  This  lady, 
I  know  from  some  one  in  whom  I  place  implicit 
confidence,  who  knew  her  personally,  and  was 
in  fact  a  very  near  relative,  was  the  daughter 
of  the  esteemed  Folco  Portinari.  .  She 


The  Vita  Ntiova  35 

married  a  cavalier  of  the  house  of  Bardi,  named 
Simon,  and  in  the  twenty-fourth  year  of  her  age 
she  passed  from  this  life,  in  the  year  of  our 
Lord  1290." 

These  two  passages  contain  all  that  is  known 
on  the  subject  of  Beatrice  apart  from  Dante's 
own  writings ;  they  are  the  only  evidence  to 
connect  her  with  Beatrice  Portinari,  and  they 
have  not  been  deemed  sufficiently  conclusive 
to  stay  conjecture.  Boccaccio  did  not  speak 
from  personal  knowledge.  He  was  a  child  of 
eight  years  old  at  the  time  of  Dante's  death. 
His  statements  may  be  accepted  with  the 
degree  of  reservation  which  always  attaches 
to  the  utterances  of  a  writer  of  romance  who 
ventures  upon  the  domain  of  fact ;  moreover, 
as  the  positive  nature  of  the  assurance  in  the 
latter  passage  savours  of  too  much  protesta- 
tion, we  may  infer  from  it  that  a  statement  in 
support  of  which  Boccaccio  felt  it  necessary  to 
invoke  the  authority  of  a  near  relative,  cannot 
have  been  a  matter  of  common  knowledge, 
and  consequently  that  fifty  years  after  Dante's 
death,  when  his  fame  was  already  so  firmly 
established  that  his  works  were  the  subject  of  a 
public  lectureship,  it  was  not  generally  known 


36  The  Vita  Nuova 

in  Florence  who  Beatrice  was,  or  whether  she 
had  any  real  existence  at  all.  Und  so  welter! 
But  enough  of  these  inferences  which  at  most 
lead  only  to  the  land  of  Weiss  Nicht  Wo,  and 
more  probably  end  in  a  state  of  bemused  con- 
jecture as  to  whether  we  have  arrived  there ! 
Boccaccio  made  a  positive  statement  in  a  pub- 
lic lecture.  He  mentioned  two  families  both 
then  prominent  in  Florence.  There  is  no  rec- 
ord of  his  statement  ever  having  heen  disputed 
by  them.  It  is  in  the  highest  degree  improb- 
able that  the  statement  would  have  been  made 
unless  Boccaccio  had  been  in  possession  of  evi- 
dence, or  that,  if  contradicted,  the  statement 
should  have  survived  without  there  being  any 
trace  whatsoever  of  the  contradiction.  We 
may  assume  that  what  he  said  was  at  the  time 
accepted  as  true  by  the  members  of  both  fam- 
ilies, and  consequently  it  is  not  undue  credu- 
lity on  our  part  to  accept  it. 

So  Beatrice  was  the  daughter  of  a  neighbour 
of  the  Alighieri,  and  Dante  saw  her  when  they 
were  both  children,  and  as  a  child  he  loved 
her,  and  when  she  grew  up  to  womanhood  he 
loved  her,  and  after  her  death  this  love  was 
still  for  him  the  greatest  of  realities.  Of  his 


The  Vita  Nuova  37 

new  life  as  created  by  this  love  from  the  time 
of  his  first  meeting  with  Beatrice  until  about 
his  twenty-seventh  year  the  "Vita  Nuova" 
tells  the  story.  It  ends  with  a  promise ;  for  a 
new  perception  born  of  grieving  love  is  guid- 
ing his  thoughts  upward  among  untrodden 
ways,  and  he  has  beheld  a  vision  about  which 
he  will  say  nothing  until  he  can  discourse 
more  worthily,  and  his  hope  is  then  "to  write 
concerning  her  what  hath  not  before  been 
written  of  any  woman." 

The  book  is  the  substance  of  such  things  as 
are  written  in  his  memory  under  the  rubric 
"Incipit  Vita  Nova"  and  there  are  collected 
there  sonnets  and  canzoni,  and  they  are  inter- 
woven with  an  account  of  the  occasion  upon 
which  each  was  written  —  the  vision  of  or 
meeting  with  Beatrice  or  his  thoughts  of  her, 
or  self-reproaches,  and  each  poem  is  followed 
by  an  analysis  in  order  that  its  meaning  may 
be  more  clearly  seen ;  consequently  it  not 
infrequently  occurs  that  the  same  incident  is 
told  three  times  over,  —  and  yet  for  such  reit- 
eration its  fervour  suffices. 

The  manner  of  the  telling  of  the  first  meet- 
ing with  Beatrice  differs  from  that  of  Boccaccio, 


38  The  Vita  Nuvoa 

—  no  gathering  of  neighbours  and  banquet- 
ing,—  not  that  these  things  did  not  happen, 
but  that  it  is  immaterial  whether  they  hap- 
pened or  no ;  for  we  are  at  once  led  by  the 
lover  into  the  solitude  of  love's  imaginings. 
Such  facts,  however,  as  recur  are  not  at  vari- 
ance. "Nine  times  already  since  my  birth" 
(I  quote  here  as  always  from  Rossetti's  trans- 
lation) "  had  the  heaven  of  light  returned  to 
the  self -same  point  almost  as  concerns  its  own 
revolution,  when  first  the  glorious  Lady  of  my 
mind  was  made  manifest  to  mine  eyes.  .  .  . 
She  had  already  been  in  this  life  for  so  long 
as  that,  within  her  time,  the  starry  heaven  had 
moved  towards  the  Eastern  quarter  one  of  the 
twelve  parts  of  a  degree ;  so  that  she  appeared 
to  me  at  the  beginning  of  her  ninth  year 
almost.  ...  At  that  moment,  I  say  most 
truly,  that  the  spirit  of  life,  which  hath  its  dwell- 
ing in  the  secretest  chamber  of  the  heart 
began  to  tremble  so  violently  that  the  least 
pulses  of  my  body  shook  therewith;  and  in 
trembling  it  said  these  words:  Ecco  Dcus 
fottior  me,  qui  vauau  domtnabitur  miU," 

From  that  time   forward    Love    governed 
his  soul.     Nine  years  later  he  met   Beatrice 


The  Vita  Nuova  39 

walking  with  two  ladies,  and  she  saluted  him. 
After  this  there  appeared  to  him  a  vision  — 
the  figure  of  a  lord  of  terrible  aspect  holding 
in  his  arms  a  lady  sleeping,  and  showing  him 
a  heart  burning  in  flames,  and  saying  "  Vide 
cor  tuum"  —  and  making  a  sonnet  concerning 
this  vision  he  sent  it  to  his  friends,  and  they 
in  sonnets  conjectured  as  to  its  meaning,  but 
perceived  it  not.  Given  up  now  wholly  to 
thinking  of  Beatrice,  the*  timidity  of  his  love 
made  him  conceal  from  all,  by  whose  help  it 
was  that  love  had  gained  this  mastery  over 
him ;  and  once  as  he  sat  watching  Beatrice  in 
church,  a  lady  who  was  sitting  in  a  direct  line 
between  them  looked  at  him  many  times,  for 
it  seemed  as  though  upon  her  his  glances  were 
fixed,  and  so  his  friends  perceiving  this  deemed 
that  this  was  the  lady  who  had  brought  him 
to  such  a  pass  of  love.  Dante,  hearing  this, 
was  reassured  that  his  secret  had  not  become 
known,  and  wrote  rhymes  in  honour  of  this 
lady  that  so  she  might  be  a  screen  for  his  love. 
After  she  had  left  the  city  Love  came  to  him 
in  a  vision  in  the  light  habit  of  a  traveller,  and 
bade  him  take  another  lady  to  be  a  screen  for 
his  love  for  Beatrice,  that  it  might  not  be 


40  The  Vita  Nuova 

revealed.  This  he  did  with  such  success  that 
many  talked  of  it,  and  Beatrice  heard  of  it, 
and  on  meeting  him  in  the  street  passed  by 
without  greeting  him.  Then  being  for  the  first 
time  denied  her  salutation,  he  was  filled  with 
such  grief  that  he  wept  and  prayed  in  his 
chamber  in  solitude  ;  and  there,  suddenly  fall- 
ing asleep  like  a  beaten  sobbing  child,  again 
Love  came  to  him  in  a  vision  and  bade  him 
tell  her  all  things  in*a  poem,  and  how  he  had 
been  hers  even  from  childhood,  and  to  have 
the  words  fitted  with  a  pleasant  music  and 
played  where  she  might  chance  to  hear  them, 
and  into  the  music  Love  himself  would  pass 
whensoever  it  was  needful.  He  awoke  and 
wrote  as  Love  had  bidden  him,  with  what  issue 
may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  one  of  the 
thoughts  which  then  troubled  him  was  that 
"  the  lady  whom  Love  hath  chosen  out  to 
govern  me,  is  not  as  other  ladies  whose  hearts 
are  easily  moved."  After  this  it  chanced  that 
a  friend  took  him  to  a  gathering  of  ladies 
among  whom  was  Beatrice,  and  he  found  on 
arriving  that  it  was  a  wedding,  and  he  was 
persuaded  to  stay,  but  being  seized  with  faint- 
ness  and  trembling  he  leant  against  a  picture 


The  Vita  Nuova  41 

in  the  room ;  and  there  raising  his  eyes  he 
saw  Beatrice,  and  was  filled  with  such  confu- 
sion that  she  and  her  friends  whispered  of  it 
to  each  other,  and  it  seemed  that  they  mocked 
him.  He  went  away  sorrowfully,  and  in  his 
solitude  tried  to  express  in  verse  which  might 
come  into  her  hearing  why  it  was  that  he  was 
dumb  and  confused  in  her  sight,  and  why, 
although  a  mark  for  scorn  in  her  company,  he 
yet  sought  to  behold  her. 

After  this  the  secret  of  his  heart  being 
understood  of  many,  he  was  one  day  asked 
by  certain  ladies,  "  To  what  end  lovest  thou 
this  lady,  seeing  that  thou  canst  not  support 
her  presence  ? "  And  he  told  them  that  the 
end  and  aim  of  his  love  was  but  the  salutation 
of  that  lady,  wherein  he  found  that  beatitude 
which  was  the  goal  of  desire. 

The  thought  came  to  him  that  some  day 
Beatrice  would  die.  To  realize  this  was  to 
suffer  the  bitterness  of  death.  In  phantasy 
he  beheld  a  throng  of  ladies  who  went  hither 
and  thither,  weeping,  and  the  sun  went  out 
so  that  the  stars  showed  themselves,  and  they 
were  of  such  a  colour  that  he  knew  they  must 
be  weeping ;  and  it  seemed  that  the  birds  fell 


42  The  Vita  Nuova 

dead  out  of  the  sky,  and  there  were  great 
earthquakes.  And  looking  towards  Heaven 
he  beheld  a  multitude  of  angels  returning  up- 
wards singing  "  Osanna  in  Excelsis"  and  it 
seemed  that  he  went  to  look  upon  the  body 
wherein  her  spirit  had  had  its  abiding  place, 
and  that  he  beheld  Beatrice  in  death.  Certain 
ladies  seemed  to  be  covering  her  head  with  a 
white  veil,  and  she  was  so  humble  of  aspect 
that  it  was  as  though  she  had  said,  "  I  have 
attained  to  look  on  the  beginning  of  peace  ;  " 
and  he  cried  out  to  Death,  "  Now  come  unto 
me,  and  be  not  bitter  against  me  any  longer : 
surely  where  thou  hast  been  thou  hast  learnt 
gentleness.  Wherefore  come  now  unto  me 
who  do  greatly  desire  thee." 

The  phantasy  so  possessed  him  that  he  cried 
aloud  on  Death,  so  that  certain  ladies  hearing 
his  cry  came  and  wakened  him,  and  tried  to 
comfort  him.  The  phantasy  was  presage  of 
fact  which  soon  followed  it.  Once  more 
he  met  Beatrice.  He  was  full  of  gladness  and 
we  may  infer  that  sh'e  saluted  him ;  and  then 
one  day  as  he  sat  trying  to  express  in  verse 
what  indeed  her  influence  on  him  was,  the  news 
came  of  her  death  ;  — 


The  Vita  Nuova  43 

"  The  Lord  God  of  Justice  called  my  most 
excellent  lady  unto  Himself,  that  she  might 
be  glorious  under  the  banner  of  that  blessed 
Queen  Mary  whose  name  had  always  a  deep 
reverence  in  the  words  of  holy  Beatrice." 

To  speak  of  the  manner  of  her  departure 
is  not  necessary,  nor  would  his  pen  suffice 
to  do  it  fitly,  and  he  would  then  be  con- 
strained to  say  somewhat  in  his  own  praise ; 
but  he  tells  how  after  that  his  eyes  were  so 
weary  of  weeping  that  he  could  no  longer 
thereby  give  ease  to  sorrow,  he  bethought  him 
of  a  few  words  of  lamentation  to  stand  him  in 
stead  of  tears,  and  herein  speaks  of  her ;  for 

"  Beatrice  is  gone  up  into  high  Heaven, 
The  kingdom  where  the  angels  are  at  peace  ; 
And  lives  with  them  :  and  to  her  friends  is  dead;" 

and  he  wrote  a  second  time  in  her  memory  at 
the  request  of  one  of  her  kinsmen,  who  came 
asking  him  to  write  something  on  a  lady  who 
had  died,  but  feigning  to  speak  of  some  other 
lady;  and  Dante  perceiving  that  he  spoke  of 
Beatrice  gave  utterance  to  his  own  grief  in 
such  words  as  might  be  spoken  by  her  kins- 
man. 


44  The  Vita  Nuova 

On  the  anniversary  of  her  death,  filled  with 
the  remembrance  of  her,  he  sat  drawing  the 
figure  of  an  angel  upon  certain  tablets,  and 
so  sitting,  becoming  sorrowful  and  changing 
countenance,  and  then  being  in  dread  lest 
any  one  had  seen  him,  he  raised  his  eyes  and 
saw  a  lady  young  and  beautiful  looking  down 
with  pity  upon  him  from  a  window ;  and  seeing 
her  pity,  his  eyes  were  the  more  inclined  to 
tears,  so  that  he  withdrew  from  her  sight.  But 
whenever  the  lady  saw  him  afterwards  she 
became  pale  and  of  a  piteous  countenance,  as 
though  she  had  been  in  love,  reminding  him 
indeed  of  Beatrice,  who  was  wont  to  be  of  a  like 
pallor.  And  he  began  to  be  gladdened  by 
the  constant  sight  of  this  lady,  and  then  had 
unrest  and  rebuked  himself,  cursing  the  un- 
steadfastness  of  his  eyes,  in  that  they  had 
forgotten  their  condition  of  weeping,  at  the 
glance  of  a  lady  who  had  merely  had  compas- 
sion for  the  grief  they  had  shown  for  his  own 
blessed  lady.  And  then  he  began  to  consider 
that  this  lady  was  young  and  beautiful,  and 
gentle,  and  that  it  was  perhaps  Love  himself 
who  had  set  her  in  his  path  that  his  life  might 
find  peace.  While  thus  wavering  he  saw  in 


The  Vita  Nuova  45 

phantasy  Beatrice  appearing  as  a  child,  clad 
in  the  crimson  raiment  she  had  worn  when  he 
had  first  seen  her,  and  then  his  memory  began 
to  recall  one  by  one  all  the  occasions  on  which 
he  had  met  her,  and  his  heart  repented  of  its 
wandering  desire,  and  from  that  hour  he 
thought  constantly  of  Beatrice  in  humility  and 
shame.  The  lady  at  the  window,  gentle  and 
full  of  pity,  has  been  supposed  to  be  Gemma 
Donati,  whom  he  married  about  a  year  after 
the  death  of  Beatrice,  or  to  be  a  personifica- 
tion of  philosophy,  wherein  he  sought,  and  to 
some  extent  found,  consolation,  or  to  refer 
to  some  lady  otherwise  unknown,  and  Dante 
in  mentioning  her  has  not  shrunk  from  the 
recording  of  some  wandering  fancy  and  the 
subsequent  bitterness  of  remorse. 

This  much  is  common  to  conjecture,  that 
at  some  period  after  the  death  of  Beatrice 
he  wavered  in  the  constancy  of  his  love, 
that  then  the  cloud  that  had  veiled  her 
image  from  his  sight  was  dispelled,  and  his 
thoughts  were  ever  fixed  upon  her  in  humil- 
ity. She  who  in  life  had  been  to  him  almost 
as  a  spirit,  became  something  more ;  "  a  new 
perception  born  of  grieving  love"  guided 


46  The  Vita  Nuova 

his  thought  upward,  and  of  this  he  will  write 
further. 

It  is  one  of  the  earliest,  and  it  shares  with 
"  Aucassin  and  Nicolete "  the  claim  to  be 
regarded  as  the  tenderest  love-story  in  mediae- 
val literature.  But  by  contrast  how  virile  the 
song  story,  how  dreamlike  the  book  of  the 
new  life !  For  in  "  Aucassin  and  Nicolete," 
the  minstrel  sings  of  the  love  that  "  many 
waters  cannot  quench,"  love  more  potent  than 
desire  to  be  dubbed  knight  or  follow  tourneys, 
more  potent  too  than  "  threats  of  hell  and 
hopes  of  paradise,"  enduring  captivity  and  the 
fear  of  death,  fleeing  from  the  castle  to  a  lodge 
of  boughs  in  the  meadows,  and  ending  in 
happiness  "  by  God's  will  who  loveth  lovers." 

In  the  "  Vita  Nuova  "  the  lover  is  pale  and 
protesting,  prone  alike  to  verse  and  tears, 
to  hold  colloquies  with  love,  and  to  call  on 
passers-by  for  pity,  but  shrinking  from  rather 
than  seeking  contact  with  the  lady ;  and  the 
lady  —  she  is  gentle,  pitiful,  but  a  shadow,  — 
she  glides  silently  across  our  path  of  vision, 
she  is  robed  in  red  or  in  white,  she  is  attended 
by  one  or  more  other  ladies ;  —  a  word,  a  gen- 
tle look,  and  she  has  passed  by,  and  we  only 


The  Vita  Nuova  47 

see  the  lover  repining  in  solitude,  or  writing 
verses  to  other  ladies  in  order  to  veil  the 
identity  of  his  love. 

Dreamlike  and  fantastic,  it  seems  a  scene 
from  some  faded  arras,  fresh  and  lifelike  only 
in  its  dim-lit  corridor,  where  all  colour  is 
attuned,  and  where  the  sun  is  a  thing  forgot- 
ten, —  a  pageant  in  some  Provengal  Court  of 
Love,  and  this  the  mask  of  love  unattainable, 
although  by  the  rules  of  the  Court  the  verses 
ought  to  move  pity  and  something  more. 

Dreamlike  and  mystic,  hard  to  translate  to 
a  world  of  human  endeavour  and  human  love, 
and  the  sense  of  this  may  in  some  degree  lend 
weight  to  the  supposition  that  Beatrice  is  from 
the  first  only  a  symbol,  —  a  symbol  of  divine 
philosophy,  —  that  Dante  was  not  in  love  with 
flesh  and  blood  at  all,  that  he  was  either  a 
dreamer  in  love  with  dreams,  or  a  scholar  in 
love  with  knowledge,  turning  aside  from  the 
divine  to  the  pride  of  the  knowledge  of  the 
earth,  and  then  groping  his  way  back  in  abase- 
ment. Such  supposition,  however,  Dante's 
own  testimony  overrides.  Love-language  is 
not  used  by  him  in  metaphor.  When  he  wrote 
of  love  he  was  of  love  inspired ;  witness  his 


48  The  Vita  Nuova 

reply  to  the  question  put  to  him  in  Purgatory 
by  Bonagiunta  of  Lucca :  — 

"  But  say  if  here  his  face  I  scan 
Who  those  new  rimes  drew  forth,  that  ran, 
'  Ye  ladies  in  whose  sense 
Is  love's  intelligence  ?  ' 
I  answered,  '  I  am  one  who  hark 
To  love's  inspiring,  and  I  mark 
As  he  within  doth  teach 
To  litter  forth  my  speech. '  "  ' 

And  Bonagiunta  confessed  that  for  this  reason 
Dante's  love-poems  had  surpassed  his  own 
and  those  of  Jacopo  da  Lentino  and  Guittone 
d'Arezzo,  for  they  had  often  feigned  the  love 
they  wrote  of. 

This  is  explete  and  positive.  Love  in  the 
"Vita  Nuova"  is  not  a  synonym  or  symbol, 
but  a  reality;  —  dreamlike,  ethereal,  ever 
fluttering  on  visionary  wings, —  but  so  far  a 
reality  as  to  find  a  temporary  casement  in 
flesh  and  blood, —  "  seeking  in  a  mortal  image 
the  likeness  of  what  is  perhaps  eternal." 
Such  then  as  he  has  portrayed  was  Dante  in 
his  new  life. 

i  "  Purgatorio,"  XXIV,  49  seq.  (Shadwell's  Trans.). 


The  Vita  Nuova  49 

This  lover,  tearful  and  shrinking,  hardly 
tallies  with  the  picture  which  contemporary 
records  would  lead  us  to  form  of  Dante  dur- 
ing his  life  in  Florence.  It  need  not  tally !  — 

"  God  be  thanked,  the  meanest  of  His  creatures 
Boasts  two  soul-sides,  one  to  face  the  world  with, 
One  to  show  a  woman  when  he  loves  her  /" 

And    the    soul-side    revealed    in    the   "  Vita 
Nuova  "  is  not  that  that  faced  the  world. 

For  he  did  face  the  world ;  he  was  no  re- 
cluse who  would  fain  flee  from  life's  turmoil. 
A  student  too  proud  and  reserved  for  popu- 
larity, he  was  one  of  the  leading  Florentine 
poets,  the  friend  as  such  of  Guido  Cavalcanti 
and  Cino  da  Pistoia ;  the  singer  of  the  charms 
of  the  sixty  fairest  ladies  in  Florence  in  a 
scrventese, —  and  to  compile  such  a  list  was 
only  possible  for  one  who  to  some  extent  had 
mingled  in  social  pleasures.  There  is  evi- 
dence tending  to  show  that  he  had  already 
visited  Paris,  that  he  had  studied  at  Padua 
and  Bologna,  that  he  had  taken  part  in  the 
victory  of  the  Guelphs  over  the  Ghibellines  at 
the  battle  of  Campaldino.  He  had  married 
Gemma  Donati,  a  member  of  a  prominent 


50  The  Vita  Nuova 

Florentine  family.  He  had  begun  to  take  a 
part  in  public  affairs.  His  name  appears  in 
1299  as  one  of  an  embassy  to  St.  Gemignano, 
and  in  the  following  year  he  was  appointed 
one  of  the  priors  of  the  city.  Life  was  open- 
ing before  him  varied  fields  of  activity  and 
honourable  service.  Suddenly  this  prospect 
was  dispelled.  The  Guelphs  had  been  rent 
into  the  factions  of  the  Whites  and  Blacks. 
The  latter,  in  alliance  with  the  Papacy,  brought 
Charles  of  Valois  to  Florence,  and  in  1301  the 
leaders  of  the  Whites  were  banished,  among 
them  being  Dante. 

His  exile  was  lifelong.  Twenty  years  of 
wandering  to  and  fro  over  Italy.  Welcomed 
and  tarrying  for  a  time  at  some  noble's  court 
—  the  Scalas  or  the  Polentas  —  but  learning 

"  come  sa  di  sale 

Lo pane  altrui,  e  com'e  duro  calle 
Lo  scendere  <?'/ salir per  V altrui  scale" 

Wandering  to  and  fro,  all  cities  open  to  him 
except  Florence,  under  sentence  to  be  burnt 
if  he  returns  there.  Hoping  for  a  time  for 
recall  through  a  change  in  government,  and 
then  wearying  of  the  futile  plots  and  hopes  of 


The  Vita  Nuova  51 

exiles  and  the  perpetual  strife  of  factions,  see- 
ing peace  and  prosperity  for  Italy  only  in  the 
vision  of  the  coming  of  a  ruler  who  should 
heal  all  factions  —  and  this  a  dim,  dim  vision. 

The  soul-side  that  faced  the  world  grew  grim 
and  furrowed ;  his  letters  on  public  affairs 
are  filled  with  bitterness  and  indignation. 

And  what  of  the  other  soul-side  ?  —  that 
revealed  in  the  "  Vita  Nuova,"  and  as  yet  re- 
vealed there  only  —  scarce  known  to  Beatrice 
in  life,  timorous  in  her  presence,  silent  from 
a  sense  of  the  sanctity  of  love,  eloquent  only 
in  solitude.  It  is  still  turned  towards  her  and 
to  the  regions  where  she  dwells, —  turned 
more  openly,  for  there  is  no  fear  now  that  she 
will  misconceive.  Turned  more  steadfastly, 
thanks  to  Florence  and  her  sentence  of  ban- 
ishment ;  and  the  city  claims  our  gratitude  in 
that  she  thus  dealt  unjustly,  and  like  wisdom 
she  is  of  her  children  justified,  for  the  path  to 
life's  achievement  for  the  many  is  civic  con- 
tentment, but  not  for  the  writer  of  the  "  Divine 
Comedy." 

Thus  turned  steadfastly  to  her  image,  he 
makes  his  own  soul  pilgrimage  from  sight  to 
insight.  Still  bitter  the  manner  of  the  losing, 


52  The  Vita  Nuova 

—  and  yet  what  a  Barmecide's  feast  this  — 
these  factions,  this  Florence,  transient  and 
lost  by  exile  —  in  contrast  with  that  new  life 
which  awoke  within  him  in  boyhood  at  sight 
of  Beatrice,  the  life  which  time  and  exile 
changed  not,  only  established  I  Dreamlike 
and  fantastic  in  utterance,  but  it  is  the  utter- 
ance of  the  ideal,  of  the  imperishable,  of  the 
eternal  element  in  mutable  things, 

"  For  life  with  all  its  yield  of  joy  and  woe, 

Of  hope  and  fear, 

/f  just  our  chance  of  the  prize  of  learning  love, 
ffow  love  hath  been,  may  be  indeed,  and  is." 

Beatrice  dead — his  thoughts  are  linked  with 
the  unseen,  his  life  is  a  witness  of  her  mem- 
ory. After  that,  being  led  in  vision  through 
hell  and  purgatory,  he  has  attained  to  her 
presence,  her  memory  is  lost  in  what  that 
memory  has  revealed  —  in  the  radiance  which 
is  about  the  throne. 

In  contrast  with  other  records  of  mediaeval 
love  the  "  Vita  Nuova  "  seems  at  once  more 
mystic  and  more  personal. 

Every  singer  sang  of  love,  of  the  praise 
of  some  lady  from  whose  eyes  arrows  were 


The  Vita  Nuova  53 

flying  —  arrows  of  disdain  piercing  as  ser- 
pent's tooth,  and  arrows  of  tenderness  and 
pity  that  on  a  sudden  transfixed  the  heart 
with  imperishable  hope,  —  and  they  sang  alike 
her  cruelty  and  her  grace,  and  how  she  alone 
could  heal  the  wounds  that  she  imparted. 

The  love  whereof  they  sang  varied  with  the 
singer.  It  was  Platonic  or  of  a  more  earthly 
essence  ;  it  was  romantic  or  homely. 

Cecco  loved  Becchina  and  sang  how,  when 
he  saw  her  in  a  rage,  he  stood  like  a  little 
trembing  lad. 

Jaufre  Rudel  sang  his  love  for  the  Countess 
of  Tripoli,  never  indeed  having  seen  her,  hear- 
ing only  of  her  virtues  from  pilgrims  coming 
from  the  East,  and  his  life  is  the  greatest  of 
his  poems :  — 

"  There  lived  a  singer  in  France  of  old 
By  the  tideless  dolorous  midland  sea. 

In  a  land  of  sand  and  ruin  and  gold 

There  shone  one  woman,  and  none  but  she. 

"  And  finding  life  for  her  love's  sake  fail, 
Being  fain  to  see  her,  he  bade  set  sail, 
Touched  land,  and  saw  her  as  life  grew  cold, 
And  praised  God,  seeing;  and  so  died  he." 


54  The  Vita  Nuova 

Selvaggia,  Fiammetta,  Joan  —  they  live  in  the 
pages  of  their  poets ;  a  shadowy  existence,  yet 
as  shadows  they  are  beautiful  and  the  laments 
for  their  deaths  speak  a  reality  of  sorrow. 
Singer  and  ladies  —  they  are  a  part  of  the 
mask  of  mediaevalism. 

A  distinctive,  we  may  almost  say  a  dominat- 
ing feature  of  that  pre-Renaissance  life,  — 
severing  it  alike  from  the  life  of  the  ages  pre- 
ceding and  following  —  is  the  reverence  shown 
to  woman,  at  times  a  worship  half  idolatrous, 
at  times  the  pursuit  of  a  distant  ideal.  The 
singer  sang  of  the  lady  ;  the  knight  fought  for 
her;  the  supreme  aim  of  each  was  to  be 
thought  worthy  in  her  sight,  to  live  and  die 
in  her  service.  This  reverence  was  in  origin 
religious.  The  Madonna  had  imparted  some- 
thing of  her  mystic  purity  to  all  her  sex.  She 
was  enthroned  above  all  saints  and  kings,  and 
something  of  her  glory  was  reflected  upon  all 
womanhood,  and  the  lover's  privilege  was 
service. 

The  history  of  mediaeval  love  is  a  record 
of  the  deviations  from  this  ideal,  but  in  trac- 
ing them  the  ideal  is  still  perceptible.  Love 
might  be,  often  was,  in  essence  a  transgression 


The  Vita  Nuova  55 

against  honour  and  faith, — yet  even  as  such 
it  had  whatever  palliation  may  spring  from 
the  fact  that  it  was  abiding,  "that  it  changed 
not  for  weal  or  woe  all  the  days  of  their 
life." 

Devotion  to  his  lady  was  the  duty  of  every 
knight  of  the  Round  Table,  and  yet  in  consid- 
ering the  book  of  their  deeds  we  are  minded 
of  the  message  of  La  Beale  Isoud  to  the 
Queen;  —  "that  there  be  within  the  land  but 
four  lovers,  that  is  Sir  Launcelot  du  Lake  and 
queen  Guenever  and  Sir  Tristram  de  Liones 
and  queen  Isoud ; "  and  as  in  contrast  with 
these  two  histories  other  records  of  knightly 
love  are  dimmed  in  lustre,  so  of  all  the  loves 
which  found  utterance  in  song  four  names  find 
imperishable  testimony  —  Dante  and  Beatrice, 
and  Petrarch  and  Laura. 

Much  more  of  Laura  is  revealed  in 
Petrarch's  sonnets  than  Dante  ever  reveals 
of  Beatrice.  We  may  picture  her  —  fair,  tall, 
flaxen-haired,  gentle  and  comely  as  is  the 
figure  in  Simon  Memmi's  fresco  in  the  Span- 
ish Chapel  at  Florence,  which  Vasari  says 
to  be  Madonna  Laura,  —  and  the  lover's 
long  devotion  must  touch  with  sympathy  and 


56  The  Vita  Nuova 

interest,  and  the  beauty  of  the  presentment 
is  a  charm  perennial. 

The  sonnets  are  the  work  of  Petrarch's 
mature  age,  and  in  contrasting  them  with  the 
"  Vita  Nuova "  we  are  contrasting  strength 
with  immaturity,  the  chiselled,  flawless  grace 
of  lyric  adoration  and  regret  of  the  scholar 
and  diplomat  with  the  timorous  imaginings 
and  self-communings  of  youth. 

Yet  for  this  reason,  for  this  reticence,  the 
"Vita  Nuova"  is  at  once  more  mystic  and 
more  personal. 

The  love  is  a  reality  —  and  yet  this 
vision  dimly  seen,  this  embodiment  of  the 
whisperings  of  hope,  is  not  mediaeval  —  is 
not  Florentine.  It  is  unfettered  by  age  or 
habitation. 

We  know  that  Laura  died  five  hundred 
years  ago  and  more,  although  her  name  lives 
on  the  living  lips  of  her  poet;  of  this  vision 
something  lives  other  than  the  memory,  some- 
thing that  gathers  to  itself  the  dreams  of  whoso 
reads  it,  and  touches  and  transfigures  them 
into  new  and  fairer  semblance,  and  is  in  turn 
by  them  transfigured  and  puts  on  new  name 
and  lineage. 


The  Vita  Nuo-va  57 

The  love  that  here  found  language  was  a 
love  which  gave  all  and  asked  for  nothing,  — 
nothing  save  only  her  salutation,  —  a  love 
supreme  alike  in  passion  and  in  purity. 


Ill 


PALMERS,  PILGRIMS,  AND  ROMERS      - 


JY  a  certain  innate  faculty  of  sym- 
bolism, colours  are  suggestive  of 
conditions  or  qualities.  Violet  has 
been  said  by  Mendelssohn  to  be  the  supreme 
colour  of  music  —  as  being  the  faint  hue  which 
the  air  takes  in  vibrating  to  its  harmony ;  and 
the  first  violet,  legend  tells,  was  born  of  melody, 
for  it  grew  on  the  spot  of  earth  where  the  lyre 
of  Orpheus  rested  when  he  fell  asleep  after 
playing  to  the  woods  and  mountains.  Red  is 
the  colour  of  love  ;  green  is  at  times  a  pledge 
of  hope  or  peace  —  at  times  a  witness  of  envy ; 
white  is  the  emblem  of  purity.  Such  symbol- 
ism is,  for  the  most  part,  of  general  acceptance, 
and  the  connection  of  thought  is  either  instinc- 
tive, or,  when  realized,  is  abiding.  Certain 
colours  may,  however,  have  for  each  of  us  a 
several  and  distinct  sphere  of  suggestion. 


Palmers,  Pilgrims^  and  Romers    59 

Some  particular  hue  when  it  meets  the  eye 
has  the  power  to  touch  certain  chords  of 
memory  so  that  it  speaks  from  the  past, 
recalling  the  associations  of  some  place 
visited,  or  awakening  some  mood  of  thought. 
In  certain  of  the  French  and  Italian  cathe- 
drals, wandering  amid  the  grey  light  of  nave 
and  transept,  you  may  see  some  window 
suffused  with  a  rich  warmth  of  colour.  It 
will  probably  be  one  of  the  older  windows  — 
fourteeth  or  fifteenth  century  at  latest  —  and 
the  colour  of  the  glass  is  richer  and  softer  than 
that  of  any  in  the  windows  more  recent.  The 
subject  represented  there  —  a  scene  from  the 
life  of  Christ  or  from  the  Old  Testament —  is 
perhaps  indistinct  and  not  easily  recognizable. 
The  blue  and  purple  of  the  raiments  are  dark- 
ened and  scarce  distinguishable  from  the  silt 
left  by  rain  and  wind  without  and  the  dust  of 
centuries  within.  But  while  blackening  the 
darker  colours  the  lapse  of  time  has  mellowed 
and  deepened  those  that  are  paler,  blending 
them  in  a  soft  rich  harmony  of  rose  and  yellow, 
so  that  whether  the  window  face  east  or  west, 
whether  it  be  in  choir,  aisle,  or  transept,  it 
would  seem  all  day  long  as  though  the  sky 


60    Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers 

beyond  it  were  glowing  with  sunlight,  and 
that  the  window  but  catches  and  transmits  its 
radiance  —  red  as  gold  and  pale  as  amber 
flame. 

This  glow  of  soft  light  of  early  stained-glass 
is  one  of  art's  lost  secrets,  and  like  the  Cathe- 
drals Gothic  or  Romanesque  wherein  we  find 
it,  is  at  once  a  peculiar  creation  and  testimony 
of  the  Mediaeval  Age,  and  looking  upon  it 
in  lifted  window  of  quiet  fane,  the  gleam  of 
colour  becomes  a  symbol,  for  it  seems  to 
enshrine  something  of  the  fervour  of  mediae- 
val faith. 

Of  some  of  the  characteristics  of  this  faith 
and  of  its  fervour  let  us  attempt  to  consider. 

In  this  quest,  —  in  attempting  to  touch  with 
words  "  the  substance  of  things  hoped  for,  the 
evidence  of  things  not  seen,"  one  must  needs 
walk  humbly,  and  gladly  at  times  tread  in  worn 
footsteps. 

"Before  the  twelfth  century  the  nations 
were  too  savage  to  be  Christian,  and  after  the 
fifteenth  too  carnal  to  be  Christian."  Let  us 
assume  that  in  the  Mediaeval  Age  men  were 
neither  preeminently  savage,  nor  preeminently 
carnal,  or  —  as  in  the  form  of  the  sentence  I 


Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers    61 

have  quoted  from  "  Val  d'Arno "  the  last 
epithet  applies  to  our  own  age  —  we  may 
perhaps  soften  it  into  saying  that  they  were 
not  preeminently  luxurious  or  occupied  with 
material  interests.  We  are  not  as  yet  much 
nearer  to  seeing  what  the  condition  of  this 
Mediaeval  Age  was,  only  we  have  agreed 
that  it  was  neither  of  these  two  conditions 
of  barbarism  or  luxury  —  either  of  which  was 
incompatible  with  fervour  of  faith.  The  one 
state  had  not  yet  arisen,  the  other  had  passed 
away,  and  in  passing  left  the  condition  of  the 
western  nations  a  peculiarly  receptive  one, 
and  tidings  of  things  unseen  fell  upon  willing 
ears.  The  more  primitive  is  man's  condition, 
the  more  human  effort  is,  perforce,  spent  in 
immediate  contact  with  nature,  and  the  more 
the  instinct  is  susceptible  to  its  influence. 

In  the  earliest  literature  of  the  dwellers 
on  the  western  sea-board,  the  influence  of 
natural  environments  is  seen  to  have  certain 
common  characteristics,  —  the  more  apparent 
when  the  more  remote  and  exempt  from  rival 
influences  of  Central  and  Southern  Europe. 
The  Celts  faced  the  expanse  of  an  unknown 
sea,  and  the  Atlantic  was  to  them  ever  a  nurse 


62    Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romcrs 

of  the  imagination.  When  the  sea  rose  up  to 
the  sky-line,  calm  and  peaceful,  the  track  of 
the  sunlight  seemed  a  pathway  over  the  waves 
to  some  other  world  of  tradition.  When  the 
sea  rose  up  to  the  sky-line  in  the  fierce  fury 
of  tempest,  the  beating  of  the  surf  and  the 
crying  of  the  wind  were  alike  voices  from 
the  unknown.  With  scents  of  the  unknown 
the  wind  was  laden,  and  when  the  mist 
veiled  the  grey  sky  and  lay  thick  upon  the 
shore,  the  unknown  came  nearer.  So  the 
Atlantic  became  a  supreme  teller  of  stories, 
and  such  as  heard  them  tried  to  sing  them 
again  to  their  fellows,  and  their  utterance  was 
mystic  and  dreamlike,  and  as  a  broken  frag- 
ment, for  something  in  the  voices  of  the  sea 
had  eluded  memory,  and  they  strove  in  vain 
to  recapture  it.  Christianity  radiating  from 
Rome,  touched  the  sea-board  and  the  western 
isles  —  coming  neither  iconoclastic  nor  pro- 
testing —  not  to  destroy  but  to  fulfil. 

The  Atlantic  was  still  a  mother  of  inspira- 
tion—  a  supreme  teller  of  stories — but  her 
whisperings  of  the  infinite  were  touched  with 
new  meaning,  and  of  the  union  "  du  natural- 
isme  celtique  avec  le  spiritualisme  chre'tien  " 


Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers    63 

came  the  imaginative  fervour  of  early  Celtic 
idealism. 

More  than  ever  now  in  vision  wanderers, 
they  seek  not  the  fulfilment  of  the  hopes  of 
things  material,  but  the  complete  attainment 
of  their  renunciation.  The  isle  of  the  amor- 
ous queens  had  awaited  the  coming  of  Bran 
the  son  of  Febal,  the  joys  of  combat  had 
alternated  with  the  joys  of  love  as  incentives 
for  the  earlier  voyagers;  but  now  the  bourn 
of  endeavour  has  changed,  the  voyagers  find 
islands  where  hermits  dwell  in  solitude,  and 
birds  bring  food  for  them,  islands  where  the 
birds  sing  canticles  daily  at  matins,  lauds,  and 
prime,  and  as  they  travel  they  make  fastings 
and  prayers,  and  they  come  at  last  to  the 
earthly  paradise. 

This  idealism  —  mystic  yet  adventurous  — 
found  in  some  measure  in  the  earlier  writings 
of  all  Celtic  nations,  reached  supreme  beauty 
of  utterance  in  Ireland ;  there  growing  in 
isolation  and  without  influence  on  the  rest  of 
Europe  until  after  the  landing  of  the  Normans 
in  Britain.  The  conquerors  were  subdued  by 
its  beauty,  and  in  great  measure  assimilating  its 
spirit  they  retold  the  legends  of  the  voyages 


64    Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers 

and  visions  of  St.  Brendan,  St.  Patrick, 
Tundal  and  others  in  their  own  language, — 
and  so  France  was  in  turn  invaded  by  Celtic 
poetry.  There  had  entered  also  another 
stream  of  influence  coming  from  the  East ;  — 
I  cannot  say  how  or  when  it  entered  —  but 
the  life  of  St.  Alexis,  which  dates  from  the 
eleventh  century,  and  which  is  the  earliest 
surviving  work  of  any  magnitude  and  literary 
value  written  in  mediaeval  French,  is  charged 
with  marks  of  eastern  origin. 

The  difference  between  these  two  streams 
of  influence  —  the  early  mystic  idealisms  of 
the  West  and  of  the  East  —  is  the  difference 
of  natural  environment.  The  quickenings  of 
thought  in  solitude  by  the  western  ocean  are 
imaginative  and  adventurous  —  dreams  of 
unknown  worlds,  visions  of  hell,  and  hopes 
of  paradise.  The  ocean  of  the  eastern  mystic 
is  the  wilderness  —  not  unknown  —  the  wilder- 
ness where  Christ  had  fasted  for  forty  days, 
and  where  the  Devil  had  been  empowered  to 
tempt  Him  ;  and  so  the  quickenings  of  thought 
of  those  who  fled  from  the  world  to  dwell  in 
the  deserts  of  Syria  and  Egypt  were  not 
imaginative  but  ascetic.  They  knew  what  lay 


Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers    65 

in  wait  in  the  solitude.  They  were  going  as 
outposts  in  the  country  of  the  great  enemy  to 
wrestle  with  the  principle  of  sin.  The  contest 
would  be  lifelong,  —  ever  warring  against  sedi- 
tion within  the  citadel  of  the  flesh,  and  attacks 
from  evil  from  without,  —  and  the  weapons 
of  their  faith  were  scourgings,  fastings,  and 
prayer. 

The  excesses  of  the  ascetics  are  a  strange 
chapter  in  the  history  of  fanaticism.  Pitiful 
self-torture  —  this  constant  warfare  of  sense 
and  spirit,  men  dwelling  as  beasts  in  caves, 
naked  —  treating  their  humanity  as  a  vile 
thing  to  be  scourged  into  submission  to 
hunger  and  cold.  So  rigorous  was  the  regi- 
men that  often  reason  failed  —  and  hence  the 
eastern  reverence  for  the  insane. 

The  fairer  side  of  ascetic  life,  and  some  of 
its  shadow,  may  be  seen  reproduced  in  Pietro 
Lorenzetti's  fresco  of  the  "  Hermits  of  the 
Thebaid "  in  the  Campo  Santo  at  Pisa. 
There,  for  the  most  part,  they  are  reading  or 
meditating,  or  are  engaged  in  rural  pursuits. 
There  are  also  incidents  from  the  lives  of 
certain  of  the  hermits  —  the  temptation  of 
St.  Anthony,  and  Christ  appearing  to  him  in 


66    Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers 

vision,  St.  Hilarion  subduing  a  dragon  by  the 
sign  of  the  Cross,  and  the  visit  of  St.  Anthony 
to  St.  Paul,  the  patriarch  of  the  hermits,  who 
had  dwelt  in  the  wilderness  for  over  ninety 
years. 

In  the  life  by  St.  Jerome,  the  old  hermit  says 
to  St.  Anthony :  "  Thou  beholdest  me  still  alive 
indeed,  but  about  to  become  dust.  Yet  since 
love  sustains  the  universe,  tell  me,  I  beseech 
you,  how  it  fares  with  the  human  race,  — 
whether  new  buildings  are  rising  in  old  cities, 
under  whose  empire  the  world  is  now  gov- 
erned, and  whether  any  survive  of  those  who 
were  deluded  by  the  error  of  devils  ?  " 

The  exquisite  humanity  and  tenderness  of 
this  may  perhaps  be  weighed  against  some 
of  the  grosser  realities  of  demoniacal  torment 
and  the  posturings  of  St.  Simeon  Stylites,  and 
asceticism  not  be  judged  entirely  by  its 
excesses. 

In  the  adjacent  fresco  of  the  "  Triumph  of 
Death  "  the  contrast  between  the  contempla- 
tive life  of  the  hermits  and  that  of  wordly  vanity 
is  vividly  shown  in  the  figure  of  St.  Macarius 
who  stands  before  a  party  of  knights  and 
ladies  who  are  riding  back  from  the  chase, 


Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers    67 

and  points  them  to  three  open  coffins.  The 
horses'  nostrils  are  dilated  with  fear,  one  lady 
seems  touched  with  pity,  Uguccione  is  holding 
his  nose  at  the  sight,  and  the  cavalcade  rides 
on  unheedingly. 

Perhaps  the  earliest  instance  of  the  influ- 
ence of  this  eastern  asceticism  in  the  national 
as  apart  from  the  devotional  literature  of 
western  Europe  is  the  French  poem  on  the 
life  of  St.  Alexis  written  in  the  eleventh 
century.  The  details  are  softened,  but  the 
principles  are  unchanged.  It  tells  how  Alexis, 
the  only  son  of  Euphemian,  a  rich  Roman 
lord,  leaves  his  father's  house  on  the  evening 
of  his  marriage,  bidding  his  wife  take  Christ 
alone  for  her  husband,  for  in  this  world  there 
is  no  perfect  love,  and  all  joy  is  turned  to 
sorrow;  and  how  he  goes  to  Edessa,  gives 
away  all  the  money  he  has  and  lives  as  a 
beggar,  and  as  such  is  given  alms  by  two  of 
his  father's  servants  who  have  been  sent  to 
seek  him.  After  seventeen  years  he  returns 
to  Rome,  and  meeting  his  father,  appeals  to 
him  for  succour  in  the  name  of  his  lost  son, 
and  is  allowed  to  sit  beneath  the  steps  of  his 
palace.  There  he  remains  for  seventeen  years, 


68    Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers 

fed  on  the  waste  from  his  father's  table,  a  mark 
for  the  rough  jests  of  his  slaves,  daily  seeing 
his  wife  and  parents  enter  and  depart,  and 
hearing  them  weep  because  of  his  absence. 
At  last,  when  dying,  he  asks  for  writing  mate- 
rials to  be  brought  to  him,  and  writes  the  story 
of  his  life.  Meanwhile  a  miraculous  voice  is 
heard  in  the  city  bidding  men  seek  the  man 
of  God  who  is  in  the  house  of  Euphemian  ; 
and  the  Pope  and  a  great  multitude  come,  and 
the  scroll  is  taken  from  the  hand  of  the  beggar 
as  he  dies,  and  then  all  know  his  history  and 
honour  him  as  a  saint.  The  church  of  St. 
Alessio  now  covers  the  spot  where  the  palace 
stood,  and  the  staircase  is  still  preserved  as  a 
holy  relic. 

Against  the  cruelty  involved  in  this  ideal  of 
the  renunciation  of  all  earthly  happiness,  the 
humanity  of  the  poet  breaks  out  in  protest  in 
the  reproaches  which  the  parents  utter  when 
they  learn  that  the  son  whose  absence  they 
have  mourned  is  the  dead  beggar  at  their  gate. 
Euphemian,  lamenting  that  he  is  left  childless, 
bewailing  his  own  blindness  in  not  recognizing 
his  son,  admits  his  sanctity  and  self-sacrifice, 
yet  exclaims :  "  Helmet  and  hauberk  thou 


Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romcrs    69 

shouldst  have  worn,  and  been  girt  with  the 
sword  as  were  thy  equals :  thine  it  was  to 
govern  well  thy  mighty  retinue,  and  to  bear 
the  emperor's  standard  even  as  did  I  and  thy 
ancestors."  The  mother,  kissing  and  embrac- 
ing the  body,  asks  him  why  he  has  had  no 
pity  for  them,  why  he  has  never  spoken  to  her 
if  only  once;  and  his  wife  joining  her  tears  to 
theirs,  contrasts  the  emaciated  form  with  the 
youthful  beauty  of  the  husband  she  had  loved. 
The  poet's  protest  is  more  than  the  mourn- 
ers' utterance  of  grief,  for  the  faith  of  Alexis 
is  not  only  pitiless  but  sterile,  and  the  ideal  of 
eastern  asceticism  failed  to  satisfy  the  dawn- 
ing conception  of  mediaeval  Christianity. 

ii 

Before  the  twelfth  century  the  nations  were 
too  savage  to  be  Christian ; —  something  of  the 
savage  in  the  ascetic ;  and  in  the  Celtic  vista 
more  of  the  unknown  of  terror  than  of  joy; 
—  visions  of  hell  and  reality  of  torments  in 
Dante's  precursors,  but  only  searchings  for 
paradise.  These  two  streams  of  influence  — 
the  mystic  idealism  of  the  West,  the  mystic 
asceticism  of  the  East  —  each  born  of  the 


70    Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers 

communings  of  faith  with  nature  —  with  the 
ocean  and  the  wilderness  —  were  perfected  in 
union.  In  the  life-endeavour  of  those  whose 
memory  makes  mediaeval  faith  seem  to  us 
fervid,  these  two  principles  are  underlying  — 
the  fleeing  to  the  wilderness,  the  renunciation 
of  earthly  self-seeking,  —  and  the  voices  of  the 
western  wonder-world  calling  not  to  tarry,  but 
to  go  forth  into  the  unknown, — to  win  the  Holy 
Graal,  to  win  paradise  —  rousing  the  soul  thus 
purified  by  renunciation  to  an  ecstasy  of  effort. 
"And  they  confessed  that  they  were  strangers 
and  pilgrims  on  the  earth,  and  they  wandered 
too  and  fro  in  pilgrimage":  —  palmers,  pil- 
grims, and  romers.  For,  as  Dante  says  in 
the  "  Vita  Nuova  "  —  (I  quote  from  Rossetti's 
translations),  —  "  there  are  three  separate 
denominations  proper  unto  those  who  under- 
take journeys  to  the  glory  of  God.  They  are 
called  Palmers  who  go  beyond  the  seas  east- 
ward, whence  often  they  bring  palm-branches  ; 
and  Pilgrims  are  they  who  journey  unto  the 
holy  House  of  Galicia ;  seeing  that  no  other 
apostle  was  buried  so  far  from  his  birthplace 
as  was  the  blessed  St.  James.  And  there  is 
a  third  sort  who  are  called  Romers ;  in  that 


Palmers,  Pilgrims  >  and  Romers    71 

they  go  unto  Rome."  As  pilgrims  they  would 
fain  win  pardon  for  sin  by%  prayer  in  some 
shrine  sacred  with  the  memory  of  saints  ;  and 
they  told  strange  stories  when  they  returned 
from  wandering,  for  the  world  seemed  to  them 
a  thing  mysterious.  The  Dark  Ages  were  over, 
and  their  eyes  were  indeed  fixed  on  the  Light ; 
but  the  darkness  was  not  so  long  passed  by  as 
that  shadows  had  lost  their  terror,  and  as  they 
wandered  the  enchantments  of  evil  were  man- 
ifest to  them  and  perils  lay  in  wait  about  their 
path.  Yet  must  there  be  earnest  of  their  faith 
other  than  pilgrimage  and  prayer.  Renuncia- 
tion— yes,  and  something  other  than  this  ;  for 
although  strangers  they  are  here  for  a  purpose, 
and  they  must  be  doing  while  they  wait,  and 
leave  something  behind  them  that  shall  testify. 
As  yet  no  continuing  city  —  but  in  the  cities 
of  their  tarrying  they  build  temples  of  praise, 
and  the  arts  are  the  handmaids  of  faith  to  do 
her  purposes  and  make  beautiful  her  dwelling- 
places.  Write,  build,  paint,  fight  —  they  must 
do  something,  however  visionary,  if  only  the 
endeavour  be  to  the  glory  of  God ;  retire  apart 
from  the  world  may  be,  and  as  at  Alvernia  and 
Clairvaux  make  the  wilderness  fertile  in  His 


72    Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers 

praise ;  but  not  sit  beneath  the  steps  as  a 
beggar  if  the  brain  have  purpose  or  the  hand 
have  strength.  For  "  the  two  arras  wherewith 
we  ought  to  embrace  God  are  firm  faith  and 
good  works ;  both  are  necessary  if  we  would 
hold  fast  unto  God,  for  the  one  without  the 
other  is  worth  nothing."  This  is  a  part  of  the 
Credo  of  the  Sire  de  Joinville  the  Seneschal, 
who  went  crusading  with  St.  Louis  and  wrote 
his  biography. 

So  the  fervour  of  faith  becomes  action,  and, 
girt  still  in  mystic  garment,  she  walks  upon 
the  earth,  and  her  footprints  are  visible.  The 
saints  of  this  age  are  no  longer  for  us  types, 
myths  or  abstractions,  but  men  and  women 
who  led  holy  lives.  We  may  indeed  consider 
as  the  day-dream  of  a  monk's  fantasy  the 
legend  of  St.  Ursula,  the  daughter  of  King 
Maurus,  sailing  over  the  sea  in  pilgrimage 
with  her  eleven  thousand  maidens  and  suffer- 
ing martyrdom  at  Cologne,  and  deem  that  the 
princess  never  had  life  other  than  that  she  has 
to-day  in  the  pictures  of  Carpaccio  and  Hans 
Memling ;  we  may  consider  the  legend  of  St. 
Barbara  shut  in  a  tower  by  her  father  that  she 
might  not  be  seen  of  men,  to  be  a  re-telling  of 


Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers    73 

the  story  of  Danae  and  of  the  vain  attempt  of 
King  Acrisius  to  avert  the  decree  of  the  Gods  ; 
and  disbelieving  now  in  dragons,  St.  George 
— being  left  as  a  hero  without  an  antagonist  — 
maybe  relegated  with  the  princess  Cleodolinda 
to  the  domain  of  mythology  as  a  variant  of 
Perseus  and  Andromeda ;  but  however  ration- 
alistic our  point  of  view,  we  can  hardly  doubt 
the  reality  of  the  existence  of  St.  Catherine 
of  Siena,  or  of  her  interview  with  Gregory 
VI,  and  the  return  of  the  Papal  court  from 
Avignon ;  or  that  Jeanne,  the  village  maiden 
of  Domre'my,  thought  she  heard  a  voice  from 
heaven  telling  her  that  her  king  should  be 
crowned  in  Rheims,  and  the  English  should 
be  driven  back,  and  that  she  followed  the 
thought  or  the  voice  —  which  you  will  —  and 
the  king  won  back  his  kingdom ;  or  that  St. 
Louis,  ninth  king  of  France  of  that  name,  went 
crusading.  The  imaginative  piety  potent  in 
literature  becomes  potent  in  life  —  and  they 
who  are  touched  by  it  in  spirit,  dead  to  the 
world,  are  yet  in  it  a  mighty  moving  force. 

The  mystic  ideals  of  the  Celt  and  of  the 
hermit  are  seen  transfigured  by  a  new  love  of 
humanity  in  the  ideals  of  court  and  cloister. 


74    Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers 

It  is  in  the  pages  of  their  earliest  biographers 
that  we  may  best  learn  something  of  the  spirit 
of  those  whose  lives  were  of  these  ideals  the 
highest  measure  of  attainment;  for  they  in 
writing  of  them  are  uncritical,  expect  not 
questioning,  are  neither  apologetic  to  disarm 
it  nor  circumstantial  to  confute,  being  touched 
in  some  measure  with  the  same  simple  and 
childlike  faith.  So  instancing  St.  Francis  of 
Assisi  as  type  of  the  monastic  ideal  "  arising 
as  a  sun  upon  the  world  "  we  must  look  to  the 
life  by  St.  Bonaventura,  who  as  a  child  had 
been  healed  by  him,  or  to  the  scenes  from  this 
life  painted  by  Giotto  in  the  Upper  Church 
at  Assisi,  or  to  the  Fioretti  —  "the  flowers, 
miracles  and  devout  examples  "  of  St.  Francis 
and  his  followers.  Yet  the  extreme  sanctity  of 
St.  Francis  had  so  impressed  itself  upon  his 
contemporaries  that  he  moved  as  a  saint 
among  men,  and  as  such,  filled  with  love  for 
all  men  and  all  created  things,  he  appears  in 
the  pages  of  his  earliest  biographers.  Of  no 
age,  of  no  group  of  his  contemporaries  can  it 
be  claimed  that  of  them  he  was  typical. 

As   type   of   the   monastic   ideal    choosing 
retirement  in   order  the  more  completely  to 


Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers    75 

consecrate  the  talents  to  the  service  of  God, 
we  may  instance  Fra  Angelico  ;  and  his  life  — 
gentle,  spiritual,  imaginative,  —  may  be  seen 
mirrored  in  his  art  in  tabernacle  and  altar- 
piece  and  in  the  frescoes  in  the  cells  of  the 
convent  of  St.  Marco ;  and  for  other  proof  of 
the  holiness  whereby  he  came  to  be  named 
of  the  angels  which  he  painted,  we  may  read 
in  the  life  by  Vasari :  "  He  laboured  continu- 
ally at  his  paintings,  but  would  do  nothing 
that  was  not  connected  with  things  holy.  He 
might  have  been  rich,  but  for  riches  he  took 
no  care  ;  on  the  contrary  he  was  accustomed  to 
say  that  the  only  true  riches  was  contentment 
with  little.  ...  In  fine,  this  never  sufficiently 
to  be  lauded  father  was  most  humble,  modest 
and  excellent  in  all  his  words  and  werks ;  in 
his  painting  he  gave  evidence  of  piety  and 
devotion,  as  well  as  of  ability,  and  the  saints 
that  he  painted  have  more  of  the  air  and 
expression  of  sanctity  than  have  those  of  any 
other  master." 

In  the  Mediaeval  Age  the  realization  of  the 
monastic  ideal  attained  to  the  extreme  of 
sanctity ;  and  yet  it  belongs  to  it  less  exclu- 
sively than  does  the  ideal  chivalrous.  The 


76    Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers 

monk's  faith  is  ever  apt  to  seem  rather  a  thing 
apart  from  his  age  than  a  witness  of  it.  Love 
divine  and  love  human  have  been  planted 
together  in  the  hearts  of  men,  and  they  were 
marrying  and  giving  in  marriage  and  the 
immortal  tenderness  of  human  relationship 
was  ever  recurrent,  and  they  were  wandering 
to  and  fro  over  the  earth  and  fighting  and 
trading  and  marking  out  kingdoms  ;  and  some 
taking  their  share  in  all  this,  yet  follow  the 
spirit  of  an  inner  dream,  and  to  its  bidding 
they  are  ministrant,  and  it  tells  them  that 
nothing  that  is  pure  is  too  lowly  to  be  done  or 
too  great  to  be  attempted,  and  walking  in  its 
guidance  they  are  in  the  forefront  of  endeavour. 
To  some  it  will  appear  that  they  can  more 
truly  serve  their  purpose  in  the  cloister  than 
in  the  world,  and  by  the  fact  of  this  withdrawal 
from  life's  turmoil  they  cannot  be  typical  of  their 
age,  and  that  they  seem  not  to  be  at  variance 
with  it  is  witness  of  the  faith  of  their  fellows. 
The  type  of  mediaeval  imaginative  piety  is 
not  monastic  —  is  neither  the  saint  in  poverty, 
nor  the  monk  in  his  cloister,  but  rather  the 
knight-errant  riding  forth  to  meet  adventure 
in  the  name  of  God  and  his  lady. 


Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers    77 

The  Celtic  restlessness  is  thus  transformed 
into  a  rule  of  conduct.  The  knight's  vow  is 
as  much  a  consecration  as  the  vow  of  priest- 
hood, and  the  quest  on  which  he  enters  is 
lifelong :  to  succour  the  weak,  to  war  against 
wrong  and  unfaith.  Many  adventures  lay 
about  his  path,  and  the  sword  never  rusted  in 
the  scabbard.  It  was  an  age  of  conflict : 
much  of  it  against  unfaith,  notably  in  Spain 
and  Sicily ;  for  there  the  knight  might  win 
fame  akin  to  that  of  the  Paladins  of  history 
and  romance,  who  had  fought  at  Roncesvalles 
and  Aliscans. 

The  whole  literature  of  chivalry,  —  the 
chansons  de  geste,  the  legends  of  Arthur,  alike 
full  of  the  memory  of  heroic  deeds,  —  had 
been  a  call  to  action ;  and  the  appeal  of 
Urban  II  at  the  Council  of  Clermont  fell  upon 
eager  ears.  There  should  be  no  peace  while 
Christ's  sepulchre  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
Saracens.  He  came  not  to  send  peace  until 
all  things  were  fulfilled.  The  host  of  warrior 
pilgrims  depart,  and  most  of  them  return  no 
more.  But  for  nigh  two  hundred  years  the 
call  is  on  occasion  heard  again.  Votary  suc- 
ceeds to  votary,  St.  Bernard  to  Peter  the 


78    Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers 

Hermit.  Dead  are  those  who  had  preached 
before  and  those  who  went  crusading,  and 
their  conquests  —  if  haply  they  conquered 
aught  —  are  lost ;  still  the  same  response  is 
made,  private  feuds  are  abandoned,  and  the 
host  sets  out  to  recover  the  Holy  Sepulchre, 
and  St.  Bernard  tears  his  robe  in  pieces  to 
make  crosses  for  his  hearers,  and  the  wave  of 
the  knighthood  of  Christendom  foams  itself 
away  upon  the  shore  of  Syria  or  of  Egypt,  or 
is  spent  in  foam  before  ever  it  reaches  the  soil 
of  the  unbeliever.  In  the  chronicling  of  the 
quest  we  may  see  the  fervour  of  the  knight's 
imaginings,  and  the  falterings  of  his  footsteps 
and  his  purpose,  for  this  quest  is  for  the 
knights  of  Christendom  even  as  that  of  the 
San  Graal  for  the  knights  of  Arthur's  Round 
Table,  in  that  it  cannot  be  achieved  by 
prowess  in  arms  alone. 

Alike  in  a  measure  is  the  manner  of  the 
avowing  of  the  quest  —  the  vision  splendid  of 
endeavour  beckoning  the  assembly  at  Clermont 
forth  from  their  accustomed  selves,  and  the 
mystic  vision  apparent  to  the  knights  at 
•  Camelot.  As  they  sat  at  meat  together  there 
entered  within  the  hall  the  Holy  Graal  covered 


Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers    79 

with  white  samite,  but  none  might  see  it  nor 
who  bore  it,  and  when  it  had  been  borne 
through  the  hall,  then  the  holy  vessel  departed 
suddenly  so  that  they  wist  not  whither.  The 
crying  of  thunder  and  a  radiant  light  had 
heralded  its  coming,  and  all  in  silence  had 
looked  each  at  other,  and  each  in  this  light 
had  seemed  fairer  than  ever  before.  And  after 
its  departing  they  had  found  speech,  and  Sir 
Gawaine  first  and  then  the  rest  had  made  a 
vow  that  on  the  morrow  without  longer  abid- 
ing, they  would  labour  in  the  quest  of  the  San 
Graal  for  a  year  and  a  day  or  more  if  need 
be,  and  that  they  would  return  again  no  more 
to  the  Court  until  they  had  seen  it  more 
openly. 

So  they  set  out  on  their  quest :  but  to  the 
holy  knights  alone  success  was  given,  and 
two  of  these  were  buried  in  the  city  of  Sarras, 
and  Sir  Bors  alone  returned'  to  tell  of  it.  The 
others  —  Sir  Launcelot,  "  that  had  no  peer  of 
any  earthly  sinful  man," —  Sir  Gawaine  and 
the  rest  —  their  travail  availed  not. 

We  are  considering  an  historical  event  and 
the  memory  of  the  lives  of  men,  and  we  have 
no  wish  to  idealize  the  scene;  yet  it  is  only 


8o    Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers 

thus  in  legend  that  we  can  parallel  the 
imaginative  ecstasy  of  the  invocation  and 
response  of  Christian  chivalry,  and  each  man 
as  he  took  the  cross  must  have  seemed  to  his 
fellows  as  seemed  the  knights  at  Camelot, 
"fairer  than  ever  before."  The  ecstasy  is  of 
the  inception  of  purpose.  As  the  knights 
of  the  San  Graal  digressed,  and  the  memory  of 
old  deeds  and  old  desires  was  still  potent,  — 
so  also  the  knights  Crusaders.  "  Whoever," 
was  the  decree,  "  through  devotion,  and  neither 
to  gain  honours  nor  wealth,  shall  set  out  for 
Jerusalem  to  deliver  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  his 
journey  shall  be  counted  to  him  for  full 
penance ; "  and  there  were  few  if  any  who 
after  the  journey's  ending  must  look  not  still 
to  win  pardon  of  mercy,  and  not  as  due.  Not 
many  for  long  served  God  for  nought.  In  the 
first  Crusade  Jerusalem  was  captured,  and 
Godfrey  was  made  Defender  of  the  Holy 
Sepulchre,  refusing  to  wear  a  kingly  crown  in 
the  city  where  Christ  had  worn  a  crown  of 
thorns ;  and  then  many  deeming  that  the  quest 
was  ended  returned  to  their  own  lands,  taking 
no  thought  for  the  maintaining  of  what  they  had 
won  ;  and  others  remained  to  found  kingdoms 


Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers   81 

and  principalities,  and  they  had  forgotten  their 
vow  and  were  at  variance,  and  fell  before  the 
Saracens. 

Their  successors  never  reached  the  holy 
city.  Much  digression  of  purpose,  and  for 
the  most  part  voluntary:  but  Venetians  must 
be  paid  for  their  ferrying  —  Shylocks  to 
their  bond  —  and  with  result  for  them  more 
prosperous.  Although  incidentally  there  was 
shedding  of  Christian  blood  at  Zara,  and  more 
later  on  at  Constantinople,  and  the  conquest 
for  a  time  of  the  Byzantine  Empire,  —  with 
result  to  weaken  it  and  leave  it  incapable  of 
withstanding  the  attacks  of  the  very  foes 
against  whom  they  had  gone  forth  to  do  battle. 
There  was  conquest  also  of  Cyprus,  and  the 
turning  aside  of  another  expedition  to  Tunis 
so  that  Charles  of  Anjou  might  get  his  tribute 
from  the  Sultan,  and  jealousy  and  strife  in 
council,  and  even  a  leaguing  with  the  Saracens 
against  each  other,  —  and  all  this  done  by 
those  who  had  vowed  to  strive  with  single 
purpose  for  the  recovery  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre. 

The  Crusades  are  the  quest  of  an  ideal ; 
they  failed  of  their  purpose,  but  their  failure  is 
the  record  of  its  abandonment. 


82    Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers 

Of  each  alike  is  true  what  Joinville  frankly 
confesses  of  the  seventh  Crusade  "  that  God 
may  say  of  them  as  He  did  of  the  Israelites, 
*et  pro  nichilo  habuerunt  terram  desidera- 
bilem,' "  for  they  had  forgotten  Him.  Yet 
there  were  holy  knights  in  this  quest  as  in 
that  of  the  San  Graal,  and  the  portrait  of  one 
who  strove  therein  without  reproach  may  be 
seen  in  Joinville's  Life  of  St.  Louis. 

Not  a  writer  of  books,  Jehan,  Sire  de  Join- 
ville, Seneschal  of  Champaigne !  Once  indeed 
in  his  youth  he  had  summed  up  in  a  few  pages 
the  articles  of  his  faith.  As  a  man  of  thirty 
after  six  years  of  crusading  he  had  settled 
down  on  his  estate,  and  lived  there  quietly 
and  somewhat  uneventfully  except  for  an 
occasional  visit  to  Court.  Fifty  years  later, 
when  King  Louis  IX  had  long  been  dead  and 
canonized,  he  undertook,  at  the  request  of 
Jeanne,  Queen  of  Navarre,  "  that  he  would 
make"  a  book  of  the  devout  "sayings  and 
good  works  of  the  king  St.  Louis,"  and  as  the 
Queen  died  during  the  four  years  he  took  to 
complete  it,  the  work  is  dedicated  to  her  son, 
the  king's  namesake  and  great-grandson,  after- 
wards Louis  X. 


Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers    83 

Simple,  sincere,  at  times  garrulous,  but 
always  kindly  and  cheerful  is  the  old  octoge- 
narian's account  of  the  days  of  his  youth.  The 
Crusade  has  receded  into  history  ;  his  memory 
fails  him  a  little  in  the  matter  of  dates ;  the 
plan  of  the  campaign  is  rather  involved  and 
perhaps  was  not  much  clearer  at  the  time.  But 
memory  awakes  in  delight,  and  details  begin 
to  crowd  upon  his  recollection  as  he  describes 
the  fighting,  the  sieges,  the  dangers  and 
escapes,  and  how  at  the  battle  of  Mansourah 
he,  together  with  the  Count  of  Soissons  and 
Pierre  de  Neville,  had  kept  the  bridge  that 
covered  the  flank  of  the  army  against  the  Sar- 
acens, and  how  they  were  all  wounded  by 
their  arrows,  and  how  the  Count  of  Soissons 
had  jested,  saying  they  would  make  speech  of 
that  day  together  in  ladies'  bowers ;  and  how 
once  being  forced  to  surrender  he  saved  him- 
self and  all  his  followers  from  massacre  by 
pretending  that  he  was  the  king's  cousin,  and 
how  the  cellarer  had  given  his  vote  that  they 
should  not  surrender  either  to  the  galleys  or 
to  the  land  forces,  but  should  all  die  and  go 
to  paradise.  Very  vivid  also  the  memory  of 
their  sufferings,  of  the  fevers  and  diseases 


84    Palmers,  Pilgrims ,  and  Romers 

which  attacked  the  army,  and  how  as  prison- 
ers they  lived  in  constant  expectation  that  they 
would  all  be  massacred. 

He  had  told  it  all  doubtless  many  a  time, 
and  must  soon  make  an  end  of  telling  it,  but 
he  is  now  putting  together  all  he  had  known 
about  the  king ;  and  it  is  a  very  pleasant  task, 
and  lest  in  the  course  of  the  narrative  he 
should  forget  to  introduce  some  of  the  talks 
which  the  king  had  with  him,  or  to  make  men- 
tion of  some  of  his  acts  of  piety,  he  describes 
these  at  the  outset  and  then  tells  the  story  of 
the  Crusade.  The  character  of  St.  Louis  as 
thus  portrayed  is  perhaps  the  most  complete 
embodiment  of  the  ideal  of  Christian  chivalry 
which  we  may  find  in  a  record  of  life. 

He  is  gentle,  full  of  solicitude  for  his  peo- 
ple wherever  he  may  be  so  in  consistency  with 
his  vow,  modest,  —  yet  inflexible  in  purpose, 

—  asking  advice  of  his  council,  but  not  defer- 
ring to  it  against  his  own  judgment,  very  brave 

—  not  pursuing  danger  but  never  flinching  from 
it,  —  when  a  prisoner,  unmoved  by  threats  of 
torture,  taking  his  share  of  all  the  perils  that 
befell  his  army,  refusing  to  leave  the  ship  in 
which  he  was  returning  after  she  had  struck 


Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers    85 

on  a  rock  and  was  considered  unseaworthy,  so 
that  by  his  presence  he  might  give  the  others 
courage  to  remain  in  her.  Unquestioning  in 
faith,  undoubting  of  God's  purposes  but  full 
of  natural  affection,  he  replies  to  the  Provost 
of  the  Knights  Hospitallers  who  had  congrat- 
ulated him  on  the  victory  of  Mansourah  that 
God  is  indeed  to  be  worshipped  in  all  His 
ways,  but  big  tears  roll  down  his  cheeks  as  he 
speaks,  for  his  brother  the  Count  of  Artois  has 
been  slain  in  the  battle. 

Somewhat  hasty  in  condemning  the  weak- 
ness of  others,  and  then  regretting  his  impa- 
tience, he  is  himself  humble  in  receiving 
reproof,  and  in  the  rules  of  conduct  which  he 
wrote  for  the  guidance  of  his  son,  he  bade  him 
so  to  bear  himself  that  his  friends  should  not 
fear  to  tell  him  of  his  faults.  Humble  also  in 
his  failure  when  the  possibility  of  success  has 
passed  away,  and  even  as  King  Richard  when 
they  would  fain  show  him  Jerusalem  covered 
his  eyes  and  prayed  that  he  might  not  look 
upon  the  holy  city  since  he  could  not  deliver 
it  from  the  hands  of  the  enemy,  so  when  the 
Sultan  offered  to  give  sureties  that  he  might 
go  there  on  pilgrimage,  he  takes  advice  of  his 


86    Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers 

council  and  refuses,  because  if  he,  the  first 
king  in  Christendom,  did  this,  others  might  be 
content  to  thus  fulfil  their  pilgrimage  without 
delivering  the  holy  city. 

The  failure  of  the  Crusade  was  apparent  to 
all  after  the  capture  of  the  king,  and  the  ces- 
sion of  their  solitary  conquest,  Damietta,  in 
order  to  obtain  his  release.  The  chief  lords 
of  the  council  advised  that  they  all  return 
forthwith  to  France  ;  and  one  by  one  they  gave 
their  advice,  and  Joinville,  when  it  came  to 
his  turn,  urged  the  king  to  remain,  because  if 
he  departed  the  other  prisoners  would  never 
obtain  their  freedom,  and  the  king  said  he 
would  announce  his  decision  in  eight  days. 
And  Joinville  says  that  after  the  council  was 
ended,  all  either  reproached  or  shunned  him 
because  he  had  differed  from  them.  And  as 
he  stood  sadly  apart  looking  out  of  the  win- 
dow, some  one  came  behind  him  and  leant  on 
his  shoulder,  and  put  his  two  hands  on  his 
head.  He  had  just  told  him  to  go  away  and 
leave  him  in  peace,  when  he  recognized  by  a 
ring  on  the  finger  that  it  was  the  king ;  and 
the  king  asked  how  he,  who  was  only  a  young 
man,  had  had  the  daring  to  urge  him  to 


Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers    87 

remain,  in  opposition  to  the  advice  of  all  his 
chief  lords,  and  he  answered  that  he  had  urged 
what  he  believed  was  right,  and  he  would  have 
been  dishonest  if  he  had  done  otherwise.  "  If 
I  stay  shall  you  stay  too  ? "  said  the  king,  and 
he  answered  "  Yes  "  if  he  could  find  means  to 
live  upon,  and  the  king  told  him  to  be  of  good 
comfort  for  he  was  very  grateful  for  his  advice  ; 
and  on  the  eight  day  the  king  announced  that 
he  would  remain,  and  held  Joinville  to  his 
promise. 

Fortitude,  humility,  gentleness,  are  all  embod- 
ied in  the  king's  conduct  in  this  scene,  and  it 
is  in  the  recording  of  such  incidents  that  Join- 
ville's  Life  of  St.  Louis  has  its  unique  and 
enduring  value,  as  the  portrait  of  a  knight 
without  reproach,  who,  alike  armoured  or  unar- 
moured,  did  nothing  base.  As  king,  he  ruled 
with  justice,  clemency,  and  wise  ordinance. 
As  son,  as  husband,  as  father  he  was  alike 
loving  and  loved.  He  walked  uprightly  in  the 
allotted  path  of  human  duty ;  yet  still  withal  a 
stranger  and  a  pilgrim.  Still  for  him  the  inner 
dream  and  the  quest  of  its  fulfilment,  —  still 
hope  unconquerable.  He  would  fain  again  go 
crusading,  and  thirteen  years  later  did  set  out 


88    Palmer  S,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers 

with  a  smaller  army  than  before,  and  died  at 
Tunis,  —  far  from  the  city  he  might  not  enter, 
yet  seeking  it,  nor  from  attainment  so  remote 
but  that  some  Pisgah-sight  of  promise  passed 
before  his  eyes  in  dying. 

This  was  the  last  Crusade,  and  after  the 
death  of  the  king  the  army  all  came  back 
again,  or  rather  such  of  them  as  the  plague 
had  spared ;  and  there  was  soon  enough  to  do 
in  fighting  Saracens  in  Europe,  without  seek- 
ing them  in  Palestine. 

Many  of  those  who  had  gone  with  St.  Louis 
on  his  first  Crusade  were  unwilling  to  accom- 
pany him  again,  and  among  the  number  of 
these  was  Joinville,  for  he  had  found  that 
while  absent  in  the  service  of  God  and  the 
king,  his  lands  had  been  harried,  his  people 
impoverished  and  oppressed,  and  he  was  of 
opinion  that  he  would  be  best  doing  God's  will 
by  remaining  to  help  and  defend  them,  and  by 
going  no  more  on  pilgrimage.  His  purpose 
being  only  to  write  of  such  things  as  he  knew 
he  will  make  no  account  of  the  expedition  to 
Tunis,  for  he  thanks  God  he  was  not  there ; 
and  so  the  book  closes,  briefly  telling  of  the 
king's  death  and  canonization  and  appearance 


Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers    89 

to  him  in  a  dream,  and  leaving  us  in  no  uncer- 
tainty as  to  Joinville's  views  about  crusading. 


in 


In  the  changed  temper  of  the  old  Seneschal 
we  may  discern  something  of  the  changing 
spirit  of  the  age.  In  the  years  ensuing  there 
was  much  difference  of  opinion  as  to  how  best 
to  do  God's  will,  or  whether  to  do  it  at  all,  — 
differences  only  to  be  settled  by  the  sword, 
—  but  unanimity  among  the  knights  about 
going  no  more  on  pilgrimage.  Less  also  of  a 
childlike  inconsequence  in  the  actions  of  faith, 
in  other  words  less  imaginative  piety  manifest 
in  them ;  and  a  gradual  perception  that  they 
were  not  so  much  strangers  upon  the  earth 
but  that  it  might  be  made  a  very  comfortable 
place  to  tarry  in,  —  and  much  effort  to  this 
end.  Journeyings  more  practical  for  conquest 
or  commerce ;  and  other  work  for  the  sword 
,  and  issues  more  immediate  than  the  delivery 
of  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  So  the  knight  having 
given  up  his  ideal  quest,  and  Abana  and  Phar- 
par  being  deemed  good  enough  to  wash  in  for 
any  process  of  purgation  that  is  at  present 


go    Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  ffomers 

necessary,  the  seeker  of  Jordan  is  no  longer 
looked  upon  very  seriously  by  his  fellows. 

Palmer,  pilgrim,  or  romer  still  remained  a 
familiar  figure.  Indeed  on  the  stage  of  life 
the  path  seemed  a  pleasant  enough  one  for 
a  time  for  an  actor  of  leisure  and  of  a  rov- 
ing fancy,  and  served  either  as  one  of  love's 
disguises  or  as  a  help  to  its  forgetting ;  and 
as  such,  picturesque  and  interesting,  with  coc- 
kle-hat and  staff  and  sandal  shoon,  for  long 
he  wanders  in  and  out  of  the  romances  and 
plays  of  the  succeeding  ages,  a  foil  to  graver 
parts,  a  mark  for  laughter  kindly  or  contemp- 
tuous, tricked  out  in  antique  garb  and  more  of 
a  mummer  than  his  fellows,  yet  at  times  meet- 
ing with  a  careless  glance  of  sympathy  for 
memory's  sake. 

Aucassin  in  the  dungeon  singing  of  the 
beauty  of  Nicolete  tells  how  a  palmer  from 
Limousin  lay  tossing  upon  his  bed  in  pain 
and  at  sight  of  her  passing  by  was  healed  of 
his  sickness  and  went  back  to  his  own  place 
comforted.  We  are  not  told  whether  the 
palmer  was  setting  out  or  returning,  whether 
his  quest  was  completed  or  abandoned.  To 
the  old  minstrel  the  quest  seems  immaterial. 


Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers    91 

Perhaps  some  Nicolete  of  Limousin  had  been 
the  cause  of  all  his  trouble  and  of  his  departing, 
and  he  was  healed  by  the  vision  of  Nicolete, 
and  it  did  not  matter  much  what  he  was  look- 
ing for  in  the  meantime.  In  this  indifference 
to  the  purport  of  the  palmer's  journey  the 
minstrel  of  the  twelfth  century  song-story  curi- 
ously anticipates  the  attitude  of  those  who 
came  after  the  age  of  questing  and  pilgrimage. 
It  is  a  touch  of  the  same  spirit  when  Helena 
in  "All 's  Well  that  Ends  Well "  puts  on  the 
garb  of  a  St.  Jacques'  pilgrim,  but  rather  as  a 
travelling  costume  than  with  any  intention  of 
visiting  the  saint's  shrine ;  for  from  Rousillon 
she  goes  to  Florence,  —  a  very  devious  route 
to  Compostella,  but  one  which  led  straight  to 
Bertram,  the  husband  who  had  spurned  her, 
—  and  there  she  found  means  to  win  his  love, 
and  so  finally 

"Journeys  end  in  lovers  meeting" 

and  it  seemed  indeed  a  fit  and  proper  way  of 
ending  all  journeys,  the  pilgrim's  journey 
among  the  rest,  if  he  would  only  be  a  wise 
man  and  take  happiness  when  it  offered. 


92    Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers 

So  gradually  the  age  put  away  from  itself 
unpractical  journeyings;  turned  from  its  vi- 
sionaries of  faith  or  deed,  left  them  on  the 
hillsides  telling  "Aves"  in  their  cloisters,  or 
tilting  at  windmills  in  the  plain,  forgot  about 
them  or  jested  with  their  memory,  or  when 
regarding  them  most  seriously  did  so  with  a 
grave  compassion,  as  men  who  had  put  away 
childish  things  might  look  upon  others  who 
had  played  as  children  all  their  lives,  and  had 
been  childlike  in  faith  also. 

"  I  cannot  laugh  at,"  says  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,  "  but  rather  pity  the  fruitless  jour- 
neys of  Pilgrims,  or  contemn  the  miserable 
condition  of  Fryars,  for  though  misplaced  in 
circumstances  there  is  something  in  it  of 
devotion." 

To  cross  Europe  afoot  to  pray  before  a 
shrine,  to  encamp  in  fever  swamps  for  the 
possession  of  a  sepulchre,  —  laugh  at,  pity, 
contemn,  what  we  will,  effort  so  unpractical,  so 
misplaced,  —  but  "there  is  something  in  it  of 
devotion." 

The  flame  light  of  cathedral  windows  led  us 
to  attempt  to  conjecture  something  of  the  fer- 
vour of  mediaeval  faith,  and  the  conjecture 


Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romers    93 

leads  us  back  to  a  little  chapel  in  the  cathe- 
dral at  Siena,  the  chapel  of  St.  Giovanni. 

It  is  scarce  eight  yards  across,  low  and 
round,  the  dome  blue  and  starred  with  gold, 
which  all  looks  very  soft  and  rich  in  the  dim, 
gradual  light.  There  is  a  font  there  carved 
by  Jacopo  della  Quercia,  a  statue  of  St.  John 
by  Donatello,  and  also  some  small  frescoes  by 
Pinturricchio,  which  were  commissioned  by  a 
knight  of  St.  John  of  Rhodes,  Alberto  Arrin- 
ghieri.  In  one  of  these  the  knight  is  represented 
as  a  young  man  in  the  habit  of  his  order  kneel- 
ing in  prayer. 

He  is  kneeling  in  a  flowery  meadow.  In 
the  background  there  is  a  typical  mediaeval 
landscape,  full  of  life  and  movement,  hills  and 
castles  with  turrets  and  battlements,  a  wooded 
vale  and  a  lake  beyond  it  winding  amid  the 
hills,  and  men  are  hurrying  to  and  fro,  and 
one  on  horseback  rides  with  speed.  "  Helmet 
and  hauberk  thou  shouldst  have  worn,  and 
been  girt  with  the  sword  as  were  thy  fellows," 
—  such  was  Euphemian's  lament  over  his  son 
Alexis  who  had  chosen  the  sanctity  of  poverty. 
This  knight  is  in  full  armour,  and  his  sword  is 
girt  to  his  side ;  but  he  has  doffed  his  helmet 


94    Palmers,  Pilgrims,  and  Romcrs 

and  his  gauntlets  and  is  kneeling  with  bared 
head  and  hands  uplifted.  Not  the  refusal  of 
life's  turmoil  this,  but  a  pause  before  action, 
and  the  gathering  of  strength  which  should 
endure  questing  and  pilgrimage. 


IV 


VISION  AND  MEMORY 


'N  a  wild  glen  in  Devon  the  water 
leaps  in  riot  down  the  crags  and 
swirls  with  deep  murmur  over  the 
pools.  The  thickets  of  gnarled  oak  and  beech 
and  ash  start  from  the  water's  brim,  and  bend- 
ing shadow  it,  and  then  wind  steeply  up  the 
hillsides.  The  verdure  is  the  deep  full  green 
of  late  summer  scarred  by  the  crimson  clusters 
of  the  ash  berries.  On  the  moor  above  are 
long  belts  of  bracken  and  the  purple  glory  of 
heather. 

The  wind  stirs  gently  in  the  glen,  swaying 
with  soft  undulation  the  ferns  and  grasses  that 
cluster  in  rock-crevices. 

The  soft  temperate  air  breathes  a  solitude 
and  supreme  content.  Only  the  music  of  the 
moving  water  breaks  the  stillness  with  its  eter- 
nal note  of  sadness.  The  fascination  of  its 


96  Vision  and  Memory 

melody  lures  from  the  perfect  pleasure  of  the 
present  to  memories.  Memories  called  from 
the  past  by  some  unlooked-for  turn  of  the 
wheel  of  remembrance ;  memories  of  other 
scenes  in  other  lands ;  of  hillsides  thick  with 
olives  gleaming  silver  to  the  sun,  or  shrinking, 
scorched  by  its  embrace ;  of  mossy  under- 
growth where  the  air  is  odorous  with  violets ; 
of  groves  of  palm  and  cypress ;  of  plains  of 
miles  on  miles  of  sun-steeped  vineyards  and 
all  the  rich-hued  pageantry  of  the  South.  And 
in  the  scene  of  sylvan  English  loveliness  the 
wonder  of  the  beauty  of  Italy  seems  to  take  a 
unity  and  meaning  the  more  vivid  by  the  sense 
of  contrast.  For  memory  sleeps  but  lightly, 
and  the  touch  alike  of  pleasure  and  of  sorrow 
is  quick  to  awaken,  and  the  light  sleeper  rises 
and  hurries  away,  her  eyes  mist-wreathed  with 
the  visions  of  sleep,  a  pilgrim  to  the  present, 
"  wandering  between  two  worlds,"  and  bound 
for  a  goal  of  far-endeavour. 

What  is  this  restlessness  which  thus  draws 
to  the  South  the  fantasies  of  memory  or  of 
dream  ? 

Heine  has  given  it  perfect  expression  in  his 
lyric  of  the  pine  and  the  palm  —  the  pine  stand- 


Vision  and  Memory  97 

ing  lonely  on  a  northern  height,  and  sighing 
for  the  warm  splendour  of  the  palm-clad  South, 
and  the  palm  parched  beneath  a  southern  sky 
dreaming  of  the  gentler  coolness  of  the  North. 

It  is  the  more  definite  expression  of  the 
sense  of  world  strangeness  :  the  conjecture  of 
something  other  than  the  immediate  which 
should  more  satisfy  the  sensibilities ;  and  in 
northern  art  and  song  this  feeling  has  found 
expression  in  praise  of  Italy  and  the  rich-hued 
glory  of  the  South. 

Praise  of  a  visioned  Italy,  —  an  eidolon  of 
thought,  vague  as  fantasy,  fashioned  of  the 
desire  of  the  spirit,  —  seen  only  in  dream  — 
its  ramparts  as  though  set  in  sheer  space,  and 
girt  by  the  mist  of  the  unattainable,  —  the  land 
long  sought  of  the  wanderer,  to  whose  repeated 
questioning  the  answer  was  alone  : 

"  Dort  wo  du  nicht  bist  —  dort  ist  das 
Gliick ; "  but  for  whom  the  vision  existed  so 
long  as  his  quest  was  unfaltering. 

Praise  of  an  Italy  real  and  remembered  — 
seen  in  dream,  but  there  fettered  by  memory. 
It  will  then  lose  something  of  the  infinite  pos- 
sibilities of  the  conjectural,  but  will  gain  in 
vividness  and  dearness  of  recollection,  for  the 


98  Vision  and  Memory 

memory  of  happiness  will  touch  the  chords  of 
the  soul  more  tenderly  than  they  can  ever  be 
stirred  by  its  expectation. 

If  essaying  to  realize  the  dream  you  visit 
visioned  Italy,  you  make  her  the  real,  the 
remembered,  then  indubitably  something  is 
lost  in  the  transformation.  Some  aspects  of 
the  vision  must  be  modified  under  the  pitiless 
logic  of  facts ;  somewhere  a  cold  insensibility 
will  be  shown  to  the  peculiar  charm  of  what 
has  drawn  you  in  reverence  and  awe ;  some- 
thing that  should  be  Roman  will  be  found  Sar- 
dinian ;  some  monastery  that  you  have  imaged 
as  a  sleeping  phantasm  of  a  vanished  world 
will  be  used  as  an  artillery  barrack ;  some 
fresco  —  dim  and  faded  in  colour  but  change- 
less in  purity  and  simplicity  —  will  be  found 
cleft  asunder  by  the  gaunt  protruding  arch  of 
some  pretentious  modern  tomb,  or  completely 
ruined  alike  in  colour  and  outline  by  ill-judged 
restoration.  Nor  is  the  disillusionmemt  the 
less  poignant  although  you  may  realize  that 
this  is  inevitable  in  a  land  so  rich  in  monu- 
ments as  Italy,  and  that  in  truth  there  is  man- 
ifest in  the  acts  of  the  municipio  of  every  city 
in  Tuscany  a  loving  reverence  for  the  past, 


Vision  and  Memory  99 

and  an  attempt  to  preserve  its  art  treasures 
and  the  memory  of  lives  of  good  endeavour. 

The  sense  of  contrast  of  the  reality  to  your 
half-formed  visions  may  be  such  that  you  are 
like  to  decide  as  Heine  did  when  he  wrote  to 
Theophile  Gautier,  "  And  have  you  been  to 
Spain,  and  can  you  still  write  about  it  ? "  that 
there  are  certain  countries  of  the  heart  which 
are  known  better  without  seeing  what  mas- 
querades as  reality,  which  "sleep  brings  close 
and  waking  drives  away." 

This  is  true  of  some  cities  and  lands  which 
have  for  an  age  flashed  as  beacon-lights  on  the 
pathway  of  human  progress,  and  then  on  a 
sudden  the  flame  has  grown  ineffectual  and 
quiescent,  and  the  spent  light  has  quivered 
and  flickered  away,  and  the  embers  have 
grown  cold  and  been  scattered,  and  only  their 
memories  abide ;  or  if  life  still  clings  to  the 
spot  it  is  as  the  young  phoenix —  posthumous, 
—  born  amid  the  ashes  of  life  already  departed, 
seeming  as  it  were  a  stranger  trespassing  on 
and  violating  the  sanctity  of  a  tomb. 

Tunis  may  hold  the  dust  of  Carthage  in 
pledge,  but  it  would  be  hard  to  part  it  from 
the  sand  of  the  desert. 


loo  Vision  and  Memory 

Persepolis  too,  it  is  better  not  to  visit.  I 
have  never  been  there  and  am  not  in  the 
least  likely  to  go,  and  my  entry  into  the 
capital  will  always  remain  an  entirely  poetic 
rhapsody  — 

"  //  is  a  glorious  thing  to  be  a  king 
And  ride  in  triumph  to  Persepolis" 

and  Marlowe's  mighty  line  governs  the  cere- 
mony. I  enter  riding  in  triumph.  I  am  for 
the  nonce  a  king.  It  is  inconceivable  that 
any  actual  visit  would  have  other  result  than 
to  blur  this  vision  and  shatter  the  fabric  of  the 
glory  of  Tamerlane. 

But  I  cannot  feel  that  it  is  better  not  to 
visit  Spain  in  order  to  leave  dreams  intact, 
and  even  the  most  elegiac  of  those  who  travel 
there  are  neither  tongue-tied  by  the  sense  of 
contrast  nor  yet  is  their  utterance  a  lament 
that  the  past  has  been  swept  away.  Rather 
would  it  seem  that  the  hand  of  Time  has 
touched  the  mediaeval  glory  of  Granada  and 
Castile  very  gently  and  reverently,  mellowing 
it  in  radiance  and  sustaining  it  in  sleep.  And 
assuredly  it  is  without  question  better  to  visit 
Italy  and  get  visions  modified  as  may  be,  for 


Vision  and  Memory  101 

Italy  of  to-day  is  more  beautiful  than  all 
dreams  of  it,  and  it  will  be  the  source  of  new 
visions  manifold  arising  on  the  ashes  of  the 
old. 

ii 

Yet  disillusionments  there  will  be.  Per- 
haps the  entry  into  Rome  will  be  one.  I 
forget  what  my  chosen  form  of  entry  used  to 
be,  but  I  am  sure  it  was  not  by  train.  Now, 
however,  having  had  experience  of  that  method 
of  entry  I  can  imagine  no  other,  and  if  I 
speculate  at  all  about  the  matter  it  is  as  to 
whether  it  will  be  the  diretto  or  the  direttissimo 
next  time  or  whether  I  shall  ever  take  a  seat 
in  the  train  de  luxe.  In  the  day  of  stage 
coaches  at  the  end  of  a  long  drive  you  came 
suddenly  to  a  turn  in  the  road  where  the  eter- 
nal city  was  spread  out  before  you,  pasture  to 
your  gaze,  and  the  driver  at  the  psychological 
moment  cracked  his  whip  and  remarked  "  Ecco 
Roma  1  "  Now  the  railway  station  and  the 
painful  newness  of  the  Via  Venti  Settembre 
hardly  offer  the  same  facilities  for  poetic  im- 
pressions. Nor  will  the  sense  of  incongruity 
end  here.  The  evidence  of  two  civilizations 


IO2  Vision  and  Memory 

in  the  Colosseum  inspired  Gibbon  to  write  the 
"  Decline  and  Fall,"  as  it  had  previously  been 
witness  of  the  resolve  of  Villani  that  he  would 
put  on  record  the  history  of  his  native  city. 
Perhaps  you  have  indulged  the  fancy  that  the 
same  spectacle  may  awaken  in  you  some  com- 
paratively noteworthy  thoughts  or  resolutions, 
and  visiting  it  by  moonlight  for  the  heighten- 
ing of  picturesque  effect  you  have  found  your- 
self playing  involuntarily  hide  and  seek  with 
a  multitude  of  tourists  whose  existence  you 
would  fain  forget,  and  by  day  you  have  been 
an  unwilling  listener  to  peripatetic  lecturers. 
You  abstract  yourself  from  these  adventitious 
aids  :  the  immensity,  the  magnificence  is  and 
must  be  awe-impelling  as  long  as  the  stones 
remain,  but  the  girdle  of  beauty,  the  wreath- 
ings  of  fern  and  grasses,  with  which  each 
recurring  spring  seeks  to  pay  its  tribute  to  the 
enduring  grandeur  of  the  fabric,  all  are  torn 
ruthlessly  away  by  its  conservators,  and  the 
arena  is  freshly  sanded,  smooth  to  tread  upon, 
and  the  result  is  rather  archaeological  than 
picturesque. 

The  same  is  in  a  measure  true  of  all  the 
relics   of   ancient    Rome.     They   seem    huge 


Vision  and  Memory  103 

open-air  museums,  impressive  alike  by  their 
immensity  and  antiquity,  but  surpassed  in  the 
haunting  suggestiveness  of  beauty  by  an  ivy- 
mantled  English  belfry  tower. 

Shelley  in  the  preface  to  "  Prometheus  Un- 
bound "  states  that :  "  The  poem  was  chiefly 
written  upon  the  mountainous  ruins  of  the 
Baths  of  Caracalla,  among  the  flowery  glades 
and  thickets  of  odoriferous  blossoming  trees, 
which  are  extended  in  ever-winding  labyrinths 
upon  its  immense  platforms  and  dizzy  arches 
suspended  in  the  air." 

Glades  and  thickets  are  there  no  longer. 
No  glint  of  colour  in  the  arches.  Their  dull 
red  is  arid  and  bare  as  the  sand  beneath  them. 
There  is  nothing  to  abstract  the  attention  from 
the  crumbling  masonry  or  to  hinder  the  real- 
ization of  the  fact  that  these  were  once  baths 
and  are  dust  baths  still. 

Nature  is  the  most  fitting  guardian  of  the 
monuments  which  a  vanished  race  have  en- 
trusted to  her  keeping,  and  conservation  such 
as  this  is  in  very  deed  a  defilement. 

Rome  has  disillusionments,  and  yet  Rome 
is  assuredly  of  all  museums  the  most  fascinat- 
ing. 


104  Vision  and  Memory 

The  eternal  city!  —  time's  enigma  in  its 
perodic  newness  of  life.  The  eternal  cities  !  — 
city  built  upon  city  —  Rome  of  the  Caesars, 
Rome  of  the  Papacy,  Rome  in  her  tireless  ac- 
tivity the  capital  of  Italy.  Coming  to  Rome 
you  are  not  a  stranger,  you  have  followed  the 
path  immemorial  and  inevitable,  you  have 
come  to  your  heritage,  for  it  is  a  part  of  the 
destiny  of  things,  of  your  destiny  and  hers, 
that  you  should  come  and  that  she  should 
teach.  You  have  come  even  as  your  fathers 
have  come,  as  all  nations  have  come,  captives 
for  a  witness  of  her  triumph,  conquering  Goths 
to  be  conquered  by  her  unarmed  strength, 
Emperors  and  Kings  to  do  obeisance  to 
Christ's  Vicar,  pilgrims  from  far  lands  —  bare- 
footed and  travel-stained — to  offer  prayers 
before  some  shrine  that  they  might  win  par- 
don for  sin,  lovers  of  art  to  gaze  upon  her 
treasuries  and  win  the  thoughts  that  lie  pris- 
oned in  her  marbles.  And  long  as  is  the  roll 
of  her  visitants  the  eternal  city  has  been  justi- 
fied of  them  and  they  have  learnt  in  the 
measure  of  their  seeking,  if  they  have  sought 
humbly  and  waited :  the  dried  rod  blossomed 
in  token  that  Tannhauser  might  be  saved,  but 


Vision  and  Memory  105 

he  had  stayed  not  within  the  gates  and  knew 
it  not. 

So  for  centuries  the  human  tide,  changeless 
and  ever  changing  as  the  sea,  has  surged 
within  her  gates,  bringing  to  her  its  needs,  its 
doubts  and  aspirations, —  to  learn  of  her  forti- 
tude to  bear,  of  her  energy  to  create,  of  her 
faith  to  suffer  and  to  hope.  Drifting  on  the 
tide,  coming  to  your  heritage,  you  wander 
amid  her  streets,  and  piece  by  piece,  and  stone 
by  stone  you  make  her  memories  your  own, 
and  unravel  and  remember  and  recreate  her 
history  and  yours ;  and  by  the  sorcery  of 
dreams,  temples  and  palaces  are  recaptured 
from  the  past,  and  "  cloud-capt "  the  struc- 
tures of  Imperial  Rome  float  before  the  eye 
in  pristine  grandeur. 

Then  a  vision  no  less  wonderful, —  the 
mighty  dome  and  gleaming  cross  of  St,  Peter's 
dwarfing  the  seven  hills,  the  mass  of  lesser 
domes  and  campaniles  innumerable,  and  all 
around  treading  on  the  dust  of  Caesars  a  city 
joyous  with  life,  a  life  bizarre  and  cosmopoli- 
tan, revelling  in  the  sunshine  of  the  Roman 
winter,  streaming  through  art  galleries,  dust- 
ing sacristies  with  dainty  dresses  in  the  search 


io6  Vision  and  Memory 

for  pictures,  marching  with  candles  through 
the  Catacombs,  crowding  into  the  Sistine  to 
see  the  Pope  at  High  Mass,  shopping  in  the 
Corso  and  getting  the  news  at  Piale's  in 
the  morning,  and  after  lunch  making  a  Rotten 
Row  of  the  Pincio, —  enjoying  to  the  uttermost 
everything  there  is  to  be  enjoyed,  the  con- 
certs, the  balls  at  the  Quirinal,  the  opera,  and 
the  Carnival. 

Wandering  between  these  two  visions  you 
forgive  much  that  is  alien  to  expectation, 
you  will  forgive  the  conservators  of  classic 
Rome  their  archaeological  trend,  you  will  for- 
give the  newness  of  new  Rome,  the  huge 
monument  to  Victor  Emmanuel,  the  unfin- 
ished Palace  of  Justice  and  the  bare  embank- 
ment of  the  Tiber,  for  the  city  still  is  sacrosanct 
of  memory,  inviolate  alike  to  testify  and  to 
teach,  and  these  changes  are  a  token  that  the 
measure  of  her  years  is  as  yet  unspanned. 


in 


Whatever  the  vision  of  Venice  which  imagi- 
nation has  bodied  forth,  the  reality  cannot  fail 
of  picturesqueness,  and  if  the  city  be  entered 


Vision  and  Memory  107 

at  dusk,  the  first  impression  is  likely  to  sur- 
pass all  conjecture.  After  the  long  railway 
journey  the  contrast  is  fascinating.  To  step 
into  a  gondola  and  glide  through  narrow 
waterways  under  low  bridges  the  lamps  of 
which  are  reflected  as  stars  in  the  still  depth, 
hearing  the  slow  swirl  of  the  water  round  the 
keel,  and  the  murmur  of  the  ripples  receding 
from  the  oar  faint  as  retreating  footsteps.  To 
listen  to  the  boatman's  melancholy,  deep- 
throated  cry  in  passing  canals  on  either  hand 
that  thread  their  way  amid  mouldering  palaces 
dim  and  mysterious  in  the  dusk.  Then  to 
emerge  suddenly  in  the  grand  canal,  to  be- 
come one  among  other  gondolas,  gliding  on 
the  still  water  over  the  quivering  shadows  of 
churches  and  palaces,  and  on  to  the  Lion  and 
minarets  of  St.  Mark  and  the  brilliant  gleam 
of  the  Piazza.  This  is  surely  the  closest  sub- 
stitute to  a  visit  to  fairyland  which  can  fall  to 
the  lot  of  ordinary  mortals. 

Morning  brings  reflection.  Some  of  the 
palaces  are  dingy  in  decay,  and  like  stage 
scenery  lose  their  impressiveness  in  the  light 
of  day.  But  nothing  can  efface  the  memory  of 
the  wonder  and  delight  of  the  first  impression, 


io8  Vision  and  Memory 

and  knowledge  more  minute  adds  to  one 
detail  the  charm  it  takes  from  another.  When 
you  have  settled  down  to  see  the  city,  and 
wander  through  churches  to  look  at  Bellinis 
and  Tintorettos,  at  times  gliding  through  the 
silent  waterways  you  pass  by  a  coign  of  re- 
pose so  perfect,  where  so  little  of  change  has 
marked  the  passage  of  centuries,  that  it  seems 
that  the  touch  of  time  has  ceased  utterly,  and 
that  you  are  wafted  as  by -some  stroke  of  an 
enchanter's  wand  back  to  when  the  Doges 
"used  to  wed  the  sea  with  rings,"  for  the 
water  is  dappling  the  palace  steps,  and  the 
sunlight  is  flushing  the  veins  of  the  marble 
portico  now  as  in  the  days  of  the  Dandolos. 

The  house  of  Othello  has  nothing  save  tra- 
dition to  distinguish  it  from  other  palaces  on 
the  Riva,  and  yet  the  fact  destroys  no  illusion. 

Shakespeare's  Italy  is  of  local  habitation 
too  unsubstantial  for  the  traveller  to  realize  its 
landmarks,  nor  is  it  fashioned  of  the  desire 
of  dreams  which  recur  to  haunt  in  rivalry 
with  the  reality.  For  Shakespeare  cannot  be 
classed  among  the  lovers  of  Italy  in  the  sense 
in  which  some  English  and  German  poets 
have  been.  He  adopted  it  as  the  accepted 


Vision  and  Memory  109 

setting  of  tragedy  and  romance,  a  shadowy 
background,  faintly  outlined  in  the  light  of 
Bandello  and  Boccaccio,  but  merely  a  back- 
ground, and  with  nothing  introduced  in  it 
which  might  divert  the  attention  from  the 
swift  action  of  life.  Local  colour  in  plenty 
where  he  knew  it  —  of  London  and  Windsor 
—  breaths  of  the  English  woodland  whether 
the  forest  be  Arden  or  a  wood  near  Athens. 
But  hardly  any  attempt  to  imagine  local 
colour.  Palaces  and  taverns  were  to  him  like 
enough  all  the  world  over,  inasmuch  as  nobles 
and  roysterers  tarried  in  them,  for  they  were 
the  heart  of  the  matter. 

Whatever  the  story  called  for  there  were 
good  sound  models  at  Hampton  or  Eastcheap. 
A  thick  coat  of  local  colour  is  apt  to  clog  the 
wheel  of  action,  and  there  is  food  enough  for 
all  moralizing  in  the  common  interests  of  life. 

An  attempt  to  generalize  as  to  the  con- 
ception of  Italy  held  by  the  Elizabethan 
dramatists  must  rather  have  reference  to  the 
characters  than  the  cities  where  the  scenes 
are  laid.  We  may  say  that  they  looked  upon 
Italy  as  a  land  of  quick  moving  human  pas- 
sion and  infinite  caprice  of  fate,  but  that  Italy 


no  Vision  and  Memory 

was  hardly  a  geographical  expression,  that 
amongst  the  outlying  parts  of  it  must  be  num- 
bered Sicily  and  Illyria,  and  Vienna  as  being 
the  scene  of  "  Measure  for  Measure,"  and  also 
surely,  by  the  fitness  of  things,  sea-girt  Bo- 
hemia. In  short  as  a  local  habitation  it  is 
"  airy  nothing,"  but  the  life  of  it  is  common  to 
all  humanity. 

Hence  if  memories  be  wakeful  at  Amalfi  — 
set  amid  the  golden  orange  groves  on  the  Bay 
of  Salerno  —  they  dwell  rather  upon  the  vicis- 
situdes of  the  little  republic  —  mistress  of  the 
sea  before  the  mighty  days  of  Pisa's  power  — 
than  upon  the  sad  fate  of  the  duchess  in 
Webster's  great  tragedy ;  and  at  Padua,  so 
fascinating  were  Giotto's  frescoes  in  the  Arena 
Chapel,  and  those  from  the  Apocalypse  by 
Giusto  Padovano  in  the  Baptistery,  that  I 
confess  I  gave  no  thought  to  ascertain  the 
possibility  of  seeing  the  house  of  Petruccio  ; 
and  if  Verona  be  the  inevitable  exception  and 
call  up  thoughts  of  the  Montagues  and  the 
Capulets,  and  if  Juliet's  balcony  be  a  disap- 
pointment, probably  the  illusion  so  dispelled 
was  derived  as  much  from  the  Lyceum  as  from 
Shakespeare. 


Vision  and  Memory  1 1 1 


IV 


The  words  of  the  tablet  on  Casa  Guidi  in 
memory  of  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning  are 
true  of  other  poets  also.  They  have  made 
golden  links  between  Italy  and  England. 

Impelled  by  the  desire  of  dream,  they  have 
wandered  from  city  to  city,  and  the  arts  and 
memories  there  enthroned  and  the  beauty  of 
earth  and  sky  have  been  as  draughts  from 
some  Pierian  spring  of  inspiration. 

Milton's  lines  on  Vallombrosa  have  led 
many  a  traveller  there,  and  will  do  until  the 
forests  are  all  cut  down.  And  the  wanderings 
of  "  Childe  Harold  "  —  to  how  many  have  they 
been  a  pilgrimage  ?  —  a  dear  pilgrimage  of 
thought  ?  And  when  following  on  the  paths 
of  vision  you  are  face  to  face,  the  stanzas  have 
a  trick  of  recurring,  for  there  is  that  about 
them  that  will  endure  to  meet  the  reality,  and 
their  stately  chiselled  beauty  becomes  the  more 
apparent. 

Rich  in  memories  of  Byron,  of  Shelley,  and 
of  the  Brownings,  is  the  whole  expanse  of 
Italy,  from  Asolo  to  Naples,  from  Venice  to 
Lerici,  and  it  is  in  the  valley  of  the  Arno  — 


ii2  Vision  and  Memory 

river  of  poets — that  their  memories  cluster 
most  thickly.  By  years  of  wandering  they 
gained  to  know  Italy  in  the  infinite  variety  of 
her  beauty.  The  more  familiar  details  of  this 
knowledge  are  revealed  rather  in  letters  than 
in  song.  Therein  they  would  fain  reveal  the 
spirit. 

Thus  to  wander  is  indeed  to  know  Italy  — 
a  knowledge  not  to  be  won  in  Rome  or  Flor- 
ence. There  the  past  is  side  by  side  with  the 
present.  In  the  old-world  cities  of  Umbria 
and  Tuscany  you  are  the  sole  intruder.  All 
else  is  steeped  in  the  sleep  of  centuries.  Sen- 
tinels of  a  vanished  past,  silently  they  testify 
—  for  the  stones  speak  if  you  read  of  their 
carving  —  testify  of  the  ambitions  and  beliefs 
of  the  builders,  of  a  national  life,  strong  and 
self-reliant. 

Cities  of  the  mountain  and  cities  of  the 
river. 

Cities  of  the  mountain  —  perched  on  eyrie 
fastnesses  amid  the  tumbling  hills,  established 
in  Etruscan  strength  that  dug  deep  into  the 
living  rock  before  ever  the  Roman  legions 
came,  and  whereof  the  grip  still  holds  —  un- 
changed of  aspect,  save  that  above  the  walls 


Vision  and  Memory  113 

rise  domes  and  slender  campaniles,  and  in 
the  old  temples  of  strange  worship  the  Ma- 
donna reigns, —  and  now  the  altar  and  the 
crucifix  have  put  on  age  like  a  garment,  and 
are  in  concord  with  the  past. 

Of  the  cities  of  the  river,  Pisa  may  serve  as 
a  type. 

There  is  something  of  the  lover's  devotion 
to  his  mistress  in  the  worship  by  the  city  of 
the  river.  The  stateliest  palaces  were  set  by 
her  side  that  they  might  gaze  upon  her.  The 
span  of  the  bridges  seem  as  circling  arms 
that  would  fain  embrace  her.  The  lamps  that 
deck  her  are  as  a  gleaming  carcanet  of  gems. 
She  was  girdled  with  gates  to  seaward.  She 
watched  the  galleys  go  forth  to  battle,  and 
welcomed  the  victors  home.  It  was  in  her 
chapel  to  "Our  Lady  of  the  Thorn,"  that  the 
sailors'  votive  offerings  to  the  Virgin  were  laid. 

A  little  distance  apart  in  a  quiet  grassy 
space  by  the  city  wall  lies  the  frescoed  cloister 
of  the  sacred  field  of  death,  and  beside  it 
are  the  chief  monuments  of  Pisan  art, — the 
baptistery,  the  cathedral,  and  the  campanile 
bending  graciously.  A  place  of  reverie,  and  a 
solitude. 


114  Vision  and  Memory 

The  roads  that  lead  to  it  are  grass-grown, 
and  it  seems  that  the  city  has  turned  away 
and  clings  rather  to  the  lady  of  life,  the  river, 
to  gaze  upon  her  and  listen  to  the  music  of 
her  voice. 

They  have  grown  old  together,  the  lover 
and  the  lady,  —  old,  wrinkled  and  quiescent. 
There  are  no  Pisan  galleys  now  to  take  the 
sea.  The  still  surface  of  the  river  is  unruffled, 
and  asleep  in  its  silent  depth  lie  the  trembling 
images  of  palaces  and  mouldering  towers. 
The  city  too  is  asleep,  dreaming  of  the  past, 
and  the  song  of  the  river  is  the  quiet  music  of 
memories.  But  when  the  storm  rages  in  the 
Apennines  and  the  streams  sweep  in  torrent 
to  the  plain,  the  Arno  rises  hooded  in  her 
might,  and  in  the  dark  swirl  of  the  rushing 
river  the  wrinkled  image  is  as  a  dream  dis- 
solved, and  the  city  trembles  and  seems  as 
though  it  would  wake,  and  waking,  die. 

Pisa  has  many  memories  of  deeds  and 
thoughts  that  live :  the  site  of  the  Tower  of 
Famine,  the  lamp  which  Galileo  watched 
swinging,  the  relief  from  which  Niccola  Pisano 
learnt  something  of  the  old  Greek  manner  of 
carving,  the  convent  of  St.  Anne,  where  was 


Vision  and  Memory  115 

imprisoned  Emilia  Viviani  —  immortalized  in 
"  Epipsychidion." 

One  may  wander  through  the  pinewoods  to 
Gombo,  where  the  sea  gave  up  the  body  of 
Shelley,  or  on  a  long  spring  morning,  farther 
afield  to  Lucca,  crossing  the  brow  of  Monte 
St.  Giuliano  which  hides  it  from  the  Pisan,  or 
following  the  winding  valley  round  its  base  ; 
and  all  along  the  path  the  meadows  are  paven 
with  flowers,  and  their  arrowy  odours  mingle 
in  the  fresh  spring  air,  steeping  the  senses  in 
an  ecstasy  of  delight. 

Of  the  beauty  of  these  old-world  cities,  as 
of  that  of  hillside  and  valley,  vision  is  no 
forerunner.  For  vision  wins  not  nature  to  her 
aid,  and  cannot  tell  her  secrets.*  Her  dream 
may  dim  the  reality  in  its  conjecture  of  the 
master-works  of  man  the  builder,  of  "cloud- 
capt  towers  and  gorgeous  palaces,"  but  she 
cannot  image  the  beauty  seen  in  autumn  and 
spring  wanderings  in  the  garden  of  Italy,  the 
glory  of  the  Umbrian  sunset,  the  silver  belt  of 
Como  winding  among  the  beech-clad  hills, 
the  first  pink  flush  of  the  peach-blossom  in  the 
Tuscan  valleys.  So  whether  it  is  that  con- 
jecture has  hardly  dwelt  upon  the  lesser  cities, 


1 1 6  Vision  and  Memory 

or  that  the  immobility  of  their  life  has  made 
them  seem  a  part  of  nature,  the  sight  of  the 
many  towers  of  Albenga  or  San  Gemignano 
is  a  delight  unmingled  by  the  sense  of  contrast. 

Art  is  the  utterance  of  beauty,  and  in  art 
the  beauty  of  Italy  has  rendered  to  the  Giver 
its  tribute  of  wonder  and  praise.  It  is  the 
utterance  of  things  by  the  wayside,  of  things 
lowly  and  familiar  and  therefore  chosen  of 
beauty  to  be  her  ministrants.  The  stone  from 
the  quarry  becomes  a  gargoyle  in  the  church, 
or  frets  the  sky  in  pinnacles. 

Pigments  from  earth  and  sea  are  prepared 
and  blent  in  the  semblance  of  the  Madonna  — 
an  altar-piece  to  which  the  eye  turned  restfully, 
—  Mary  Mother,  august  to  intercede,  divine 
and  pitiful.  Yet  withal  a  girl  tender  with  the 
grace  of  human  loveliness,  and  the  type  Flor- 
entine or  Lombard,  for  the  fairest  maiden  in 
the  village  had  sat  to  the  painter,  and  it  is  her 
beauty  which  still  lives  in  his  picture,  as  type 
of  the  Maiden  of  Bethlehem,  and  the  attend- 
ant saints  were  her  family  and  friends,  and 
they  or  rather  their  children's  children  are  by 
the  roadside  or  in  the  Piazza  to-day,  and  the 
painter's  art  as  here  revealed  has  been  "  the 


Vision  and  Memory  117 

touches  of  things  common,  till  they  rose  to 
touch  the  spheres." 

It  is  a  well-known  story  how  Cimabue  saw 
Giotto  on  the  hillside  drawing  sheep,  and  asked 
his  father  to  let  him  take  the  boy  to  Florence 
and  teach  him  to  be  a  painter.  Without 
under-estimating  Giotto's  indebtedness  to 
Cimabue,  let  us  not  forget  the  early  years 
when  he  drew  sheep  on  the  hillside.  Giotto 
himself  seems  never  to  have  forgotten  them, 
and  the  memory  is  at  the  root  of  his  naturalism. 
He  continued  all  his  life  to  draw  sheep  and 
sheep  dogs,  and  shepherds  whenever  the  sub- 
ject of  a  fresco  admitted  of  his  doing  so.  In 
the  Arena  Chapel  at  Padua,  there  being  forty- 
eight  spaces  in  which  to  paint  scenes  from  the 
lives  of  the  Virgin  and  of  Christ,  he  fills  six 
spaces  before  painting  the  birth  of  the  Virgin, 
and  three  of  these  are  scenes  in  the  desert 
introducing  sheep  and  shepherds. 

Of  other  painters  learning  not  only  in  the 
studio  but  on  the  hillside  and  in  the  valley, 
we  must  know  the  footsteps  before  we  can  in 
a  measure  estimate  or  appraise. 

Fra  Angelico  in  his  cloister  at  Fiesole  or 
San  Marco  —  who  is  said  to  have  always 


n8  Vision  and  Memory 

prayed  before  taking  up  his  brush  —  painted 
men  as  angels,  and  his  are  the  pale  pure 
colours  of  the  sky  at  dawn. 

Perugino's  pictures  breathe  the  gracious 
silence  of  the  sunset  in  the  Umbrian  hills,  and 
there  too,  amid  the  vine  and  olive,  are  the 
sylph-like  aspen  poplars  of  his  backgrounds. 

This  gracious  silence  Raphael  knew,  and 
added  to  it  tenderness,  and  in  Rome  grew 
his  later  manner,  —  the  mastery  of  form  and 
luxuriance  of  beauty  of  "  the  School  of  Athens" 
and  "Attila." 

So  to  wander  over  valley  and  hillside,  high 
in  the  Apennines  on  Falterona's  ridge,  or 
following  the  pathways  of  her  waters  down  to 
the  pine-fringed  shores,  to  Pisa  and  Ravenna, 
—  so  to  wander  is  to  learn  something  of  the 
footsteps  of  Italy's  greatest  sons,  wanderers 
alike  in  vision  and  in  life. 


Vision  and  memory  —  they  are  the  two 
books  of  all  our  panderings.  The  one  is  a 
winged  flight  of  imaginings,  the  other  a  tread- 
ing in  the  pathway  of  experience.  And  in 
the  pathway  are  set  stones  of  stumbling, 


Vision  and  Memory  119 

while  in  the  winged  flight  there  are  no  unfore- 
seen discomfitures,  and  yet  after  all  our 
visioned  wanderings  we  come  back  no  wiser 
than  we  went ;  we  have  seen  what  we  took 
with  us  to  see,  neither  more  nor  less,  without 
let  or  hindrance.  The  book  of  memory  is 
rather  a  record  of  changing  purposes  and 
changed  impressions,  and  a  recognition  of  the 
measure  of  our  dependence  upon  things  as 
mundane  as  hotels,  and  as  variable  as  weather. 
And  indeed  of  the  things  which  are  written 
under  this  latter  rubric  there  is  often  a  wide 
discrepancy  between  the  two  books,  for  in 
visioned  wanderings  it  never  rains  at  incon- 
venient seasons,  and  the  record  of  memory 
witnesses  that  even  in  Italy  the  climate  is 
uncertain,  and  that  our  purposes  vary  with  it. 
At  one  time  we  have  put  about  the  helm  and 
run  before  the  storm ;  at  another  seeing  what 
we  went  out  to  see,  we  have  nevertheless  not 
seen  it,  for  we  have  seen  only,  a  rain- washed 
travesty  of  that  which  is  itself  only  in  sunlight. 
It  dies  hard  —  but  of  many  deaths  at  last 
dies  the  belief  that  the  sky  is  always  blue. 
Venice  and  Capri  were  the  only  places  in  Italy 
whereof  in  the  book  of  memory  it  was  written 


I2O  Vision  and  Memory 

that  there  was  always  halcyon  weather.  And 
alas  for  Venice  recently  revisited !  I  am 
almost  minded  to  go  no  more  to  Capri. 

And  yet  who  would  wish,  having  seen  it, 
that  the  sky  of  Italy  should  be  always  blue  ? 
Bewitching  in  its  very  uncertainties,  in  spring 
at  its  loveliest  it  is  as  changeful  of  expression 
as  ever  a  face  may  be.  Overcast,  doubting, 
pouting,  and  then  breaking  into  smiles  sweet 
as  fugitive,  and  to  the  chasing  away  of  the 
smiles  follows  the  radiance  of  calm.  Such  is 
April  —  sunshine,  shower,  gloom  and  beauty 
all  commingled,  like  an  English  April,  laughing 
and  weeping,  only  in  contrast  more  abrupt, 
more  southern,  more  passionate. 

It  is  this  Italy  of  which  Tennyson  sang  in 
"  The  Daisy,"  perhaps  the  most  realistic  of  all 
descriptions  of  Italian  travel. 

All  the  way  across  the  plain  of  Lombardy 
it  was  raining,  —  and  he  chronicles  the  fact 
unflinchingly : 

"  Rain  at  Reggio,  rain  at  Parma  ; 
At  Lodi,  rain,  Piacenza,  rain" 

There  is  something  about  the  lines  which 
seems  to  impart  a  vague  comfort  in  the 


Vision  and  Memory  121 

experience  of  similar  weather  elsewhere  in 
Italy. 

Of  course  it  rains,  and  of  course  there  are 
disappointments  and  discomforts  in  travel, 
and  experience  is  a  consciousness  of  things 
trivial. 

Sunshine  and  shower,  —  and  the  abiding 
memory  is  not  of  the  shower  : 

"  O  love,  what  hours  were  thine  and  mine, 
In  lands  of  palm  and  southern  pine." 

Ruit  hora,  —  hours  of  the  palm  and  pine  — 
yes !  and  hours  of  the  myrtle  as  well.  And 
passing  leave  us  a  little  older,  a  little  wiser 
perhaps,  probably  a  little  sadder,  —  and  the 
richer  in  the  infinite  treasure  of  what  is  written 
in  a  few  pages  of  the  book  of  memory. 
Ruit  hora  —  and  yet  the  writing  is  so  fresh 
that  it  is  hard  even  to  believe  that  it  was 
written  yesterday. 

Memory  is  a  regret,  —  and  as  such  is  some- 
thing dearer,  and  more  intimate  than  vistas  of 
the  unknown : 

"  O  love,  we  too  shall  go  no  longer 
To  lands  of  summer  across  the  sea." 


122  Vision  and  Memory 

Vision  and  memory  —  two  names  serve  as 
types  of  the  variance  of  their  gifts.  Rossetti, 
in  spirit  a  mediaeval  Italian,  a  contemporary 
almost  in  art  of  Fra  Filippo,  in  poetry  of 
Guido  Cavalcanti,  and  as  such  a  dweller  all 
his  life  in  the  Italy  of  vision,  although  he 
never  set  foot  within  the  gates  of  her  present- 
day  reality. 

Browning,  knowing  Italy  by  years  of  wander- 
ing—  her  mountains  and  valleys,  her  churches 
and  art  treasuries  —  and  yet  no  Italian  at  all, 
but  only  a  lover  —  a  lover  of  beauty  drawn  in 
wonder  to  the  South  as  a  pilgrim  might  journey 
to  the  East  —  an  Englishman  loving  Italy. 
See  how  he  loved  her : 

"  Italy,  my  Italy  ! 

Queen  Jlfary's  saying  serves  for  me  — 

(  When  fortune 's  malice 

Lost  her  Calais) 
Open  my  heart  and  you  will  see 
Graved  inside  of  it,  '  Italy.' 
Such  lovers  old  are  I  and  she, 
So  it  always  was,  so  shall  ever  be." 


UNDISCOVERED  ISLANDS 

T  would  perhaps  be  possible  to 
estimate  how  in  each  of  the  seven 
ages  of  man  the  thought  of  a  small 
island  has  a  several  and  distinct  fascination  ; 
but  without  differentiating  so  minutely  let  us 
consider  its  attractiveness  in  childhood,  youth, 
and  age. 

It  is  the  bourn  whither  are  tending  innum- 
erable voyagers  on  rafts  improvised  in  the 
nursery  or  on  the  garden  pool.  Later  on  the 
narrow  confines  of  nursery  and  pool  are  more 
clearly  seen,  and  attempts  to  reach  it  are  not 
made  so  lightly.  But  it  is  thought  about  and 
read  of.  It  always  has  a  treasure ;  if  of 
precious  stones  or  ingots  it  is  guarded  by 
genii ;  but  a  good  store  of  gold  pieces  and  fights 
with  pirates  are  in  general  preferable  as  afford- 
ing a  fairer  scope  for  the  exercise  of  those 
qualities  which  lead  to  kicking  goals  and 


124  Undiscovered  Islands 

bringing  off  hard  catches  in  the  long-field ; 
and  in  the  night,  in  the  silence  of  the  dormi- 
tory, when  sleep  has  parted  the  curtains  of 
the  matter-of-fact,  a  boat  puts  out  from  the 
port  of  dreams,  and  inky  fingers  grasp  the 
tiller,  and  flushed  arms  toss  and  grapple  with 
the  counterpane  as  with  pirates  for  the  treasure. 

The  struggle  is  over,  the  buccaneers  have 
retreated  with  their  wounded,  the  treasure  has 
vanished,  and  only  the  blurred  outline  of  a 
dream  remains,  when  the  bell  has  roused  the 
dreamer  to  the  daily  routine  of  work  and 
play ;  which  he  follows  with  thoughts  distracted 
by  a  desire  to  know  what  the  next  chapter 
holds  in  store. 

The  intrusion  of  a  petticoated  being  into 
these  romances  of  pirates  and  treasure  causes 
an  immediate  and  just  feeling  of  indignation. 
The  hero  will  probably  become  mawkish  and 
sentimental.  He  will  cease  to  court  adventure 
with  abandon,  and  the  upshot  will  be  as  tame 
as  that  of  a  love  tale.  Whether  or  no  this 
falling  away  actually  takes  place  is  immaterial. 
The  spell  is  broken ;  the  reader  imagines  the 
worst.  He  cannot  trust  the  hero,  whom  no 
thunderbolts  of  Mars  could  daunt,  to  pass 


Undiscovered  Islands  125 

unscathed  through  the  fire  of  soft  glances, 
any  more  than  he  could  trust  himself  to  stand 
firm  under  a  like  assault.  A  fellow-feeling 
might  lead  him  to  judge  with  a  standard  less 
severe,  and  yet  —  granted  the  inconsistency  — 
this  instinctive  recognition  of  the  incompati- 
bility of  the  two  sources  of  interest  does  credit 
to  his  critical  judgment. 

Love  is  a  taskmaster  all  absorbing,  —  the 
fans  et  origo  of  its  own  episodes  of  adventure  — 
and  when  the  sails  are  set  on  a  course  that 
love  directs,  the  pirates'  hoard  is  passed  lightly 
by,  though  the  gold  gleam  never  so  ruddily. 

Yet  the  difference  is  only  a  choice  of  islands. 
Palm-clad  homes  of  treasure  lie  mirrored  in 
the  wide  expanse  of  the  Caribbean  Sea. 
Cythera  in  the  ^Egean  saw  Aphrodite  first 
step  from  sea  to  sand  and  from  sand  to  shore  ; 
and  now  that  her  visits  have  grown  rare  in 
cities  busy  with  new  forms  of  piracy,  less 
romantic  and  more  profitable  than  those  of 
old,  her  votaries  turn  to  seek  her  in  islands 
where  the  woodland  still  savours  of  her 
presence,  where  "a  light  of  laughing  flowers 
along  the  grass  is  spread,"  as  in  the  days 
when  she  first  broke  forth  flower-fashion, 


I 


1 26  Undiscovered  Islands 

where  the  waves  along  the  shores  still  murmur, 
in  broken  melody,  of  the  infinite  mystery  and 
wonder  of  her  ways. 

The  voyage  is  long,  and  amid  unknown 
waters,  and  unless  love  be  with  us  at  the  start 
we  shall  never  make  the  passage. 

I  remember  seeing  in  the  Louvre  Watteau's 
picture  of  the  "  Embarkation  for  Cythera." 
The  colour  is  soft  and  pleasing  ;  the  grouping 
is  rhythmical,  almost  operatic ;  but  it  is  obvious 
at  a  glance  that  the  voyagers  will  never  reach 
the  island. 

When  in  the  morning  of  life  two  set  out 
together,  whose  hearts  are  lit  with  the  sun- 
shine of  a  single  purpose,  the  journey  is 
withal  a  hard  one.  The  gay  Court  bevy  are 
in  no  mood  for  such  a  hazard.  They  will 
float  down  the  river  to  St.  Cloud,  and  make 
believe  that  amid  the  lawns  and  fountains  of 
the  park  lies  Arcadia;  —  or  is  it  Dresden- 
China  land  ?  Gallantry  and  persiflage  will 
flourish  freely,  and  a  return  to  Court  is  easy 
when  ennui  supervenes. 

They  pass  with  their  pleasuring;  but 
Cythera  abides  and  will  still  abide,  a  "far 
Eden  of  the  purple  East,"  —  the  eidolon  of 


Undiscovered  Islands  127 

lover's  thought ;  —  and  when  Shelley  in  the 
highest  ecstasy  of  love  pours  out  to  Emilia 
Viviani  the  vision  of  a  future  when  their  souls 
shall  mingle  and  be  transfigured,  » 

"It  is  an  isle  under  Ionian  skies" 
to  which  his  thought  flies  over-sea. 

"  The  blue  ^.gean  girds  this  chosen  home, 
With  ever-changing  sound,  and  light  and  foam, 
Kissing  the  sifted  sands  and  caverns  hoar; 
And  all  the  winds  wandering  along  the  shore 
Undulate  with  the  undulating  tide" 

There  a  pleasure-house  built  by  an  Ocean 
King  in  the  world's  young  prime  awaits  them, 
and  thus  he  pictures  what  their  life  shall 
be:- 

"  We  two  will  rise,  and  sit,  and  walk  together, 

Under  the  roof  of  blue  Ionian  weather, 

And  wander  in  the  meadows,  or  ascend 

The  mossy  mountains,  where  the  blue  heavens 

bend 

With  lightest  winds,  to  touch  their  paramour ; 
Or  linger,  where  the  pebble-paven  shore, 
Under  the  quick  faint  kisses  of  the  sea, 
Trembles  and  sparkles  as  with  ecstasy, 


128  Undiscovered  Islands 

Possessing  and  posse st  by  all  that  is 
Within  that  calm  circumference  of  bliss, 
And  by  each  other,  till  to  love  and  live 
Be  one." 

Love  impels  to  visions,  solitude  and  the 
dreaming  of  dreams  ;  and  nowhere  can  dreams 
find  fairer  haven  or  solitude  seem  more  of  a 
reunion  with  primal  nature,  than  when  the 
bourn  is  girt  round  as  with  Love's  own  cestus 
by  the  gracious  inviolate  sea. 

If  the  vision  thus  portrayed  in  "  Epipsy- 
chidion  "  were  suddenly  realized,  and  we  were 
carried  as  by  Fortunatus'  wishing-cap  to  a 
desert  island,  the  result  might  be  with  us  as 
it  is  in  "Foul  Play,"  that  most  delightful  of 
all  Charles  Reade's  romances,  where  the  hero 
is  perplexed  between  an  intense  enjoyment  of 
the  charm  of  the  situation,  and  an  uphill 
struggle  to  preserve  the  conventionalities. 

In  "  Foul  Play  "  the  lovers  return  eventually 
to  England,  and  the  curtain  falls  upon  a  pros- 
pect of  uneventful  domestic  felicity  which 
promises  little  of  island  adventure. 

This  is,  in  general,  true  when  the  process 
of  settling  down  takes  place.  There  shall  be 


Un  discovered  Islan  ds  129 

no  more  dallying  in  Scyros  with  Deidamia ; 
neither  must  Achilles  linger  in  his  tent.  The 
course  is  then  straight  sailing  and  delays  are 
of  greater  import.  There  is  a  cargo  in  the 
hold,  and  the  time  and  profits  of  each  venture 
have  to  be  calculated  before  it  is  undertaken. 

A  month  in  summer  in  the  Hebrides,  or  a 
yachting  cruise  round  Scilly,  may  perhaps  be 
given  as  hostages  to  the  never-to-be-fulfilled 
fantasies  of  the  past;  but  it  is  a  tribute  to 
the  memory  of  the  dead.  The  barrister  or 
merchant  can  never  make  believe  as  would 
children  that  he  is  doing  other  than  having  a 
holiday.  The  routine  of  activities  is  but  sus- 
pended. Letters  are  waiting  for  him  ;  arrears 
of  work  are  growing  in  his  absence.  The 
trumpet-call  for  him  is  not  to  the  unknown  of 
adventure,  to  the  pursuit  of  an  ideal  that 
mocks  yet  allures, —  but  to  the  sterner  virtues 
of  practical  life. 

When  back  in  town  the  tan  of  the  sun  and 
the  sea-breezes  will  be  noticed  and  envied  for 
a  few  weeks,  and  then  this  will  fade,  and  all 
will  be  as  before.  We  seem  made  to  follow 
some  plough.  Habit  is  the  surest  antidote  to 
inordinate  fancy.  Maybe  that  the  potter's 


130  Undiscovered  Islands 

vessels  are  awry,  but  when  all  have  wrinkled 
lips  it  is  better  to  curl  and  be  content.  Wings 
of  Daedalus!  No!  There  are  no  Icarian 
flights.  It  is  too  late  to  be  ambitious.  Bow 
the  knee  in  the  temple  1  They  are  all  bowing  : 
few  remember  even  that  they  once  stood 
upright. 

As  years  pass,  and  steps  begin  to  go  down- 
hill,—  on  an  incline  at  first  scarce  perceptible, 
but  growing  steeper  as  it  proceeds, —  pleasure 
lies  more  in  reminiscence,  and  youth  may  have 
a  dearer  store  of  memories  connected  with  it 
than  has  riper  age.  Grandfather  and  grand- 
son have  often  more  in  common  with  each 
other  than  with  the  generation  that  intervenes. 
The  elder  man  may  be  more  tolerant  of  those 
differences  of  opinion  which  naturally  accom- 
pany the  stages  of  life's  journey.  He  is  the 
more  prone  to  make  allowance  in  that  he  sees 
his  own  youth  in  clearer  perspective.  Castles 
in  Spain  are  rare  of  attainment,  but  he  sees 
now  that  they  may  form  beacons  of  endeavour 
more  ennobling  than  do  mansions  in  Park 
Lane. 

Maybe  he  has  been  successful  in  life ; 
maybe  he  has  frequently  been  passed  in  the 


Undiscovered  Islands  131 

race  by  those  of  greater  powers  of  intellect  or 
application  ;  in  either  case  he  is  weary  of  the 
struggle.  He  is  still  a  seeker ;  with  some- 
thing of  a  rejuvenescence  of  fancy  his  thoughts 
may  again  fly  over-sea.  But  he  would  fain 
cherish  no  illusions  now.  The  days  of  treasure- 
hoards  and  knight-errantry  are  over  ;  he  seeks 
only  for  rest. 

Garibaldi  having  won  for  Italy  the  king- 
doms of  Naples  and  Sicily,  refused  all  prof- 
fered titles  and  aggrandizement,  asking  only 
to  return  to  his  island  home  in  Caprera. 

As  rest  is  a  fit  crown  for  the  greatest  of  the 
triumphs  of  life's  action,  even  so  is  it  a  solace 
for  discomfiture  and  defeat.  This  sundering 
of  ourselves  from  the  scene  of  our  activities, 
our  fathers  have  told  us,  is  as  the  setting  out 
upon  a  voyage. 

Peace  lies  beyond  the  waters.  So  Arthur, 
when  his  wound  was  deep,  was  borne 

"  To  the  island-valley  of  Avilion, 

Where  falls  not  hail  or  rain  or  any  snow, 

Nor  ever  wind  blows  loudly" 

that  there  he  might  find  healing. 


132  Undiscovered  Islands 

So  too  a  Viking  when  smitten  unto  death 
would  be  laid  restfully  in  his  galley  and 
wafted  over  the  viewless  deep,  and  lost  to 
sight  of  man  would  be  numbered  among  those 
who  had  entered  Valhalla.  Where  time  is  not 
nor  any  change  at  all ;  only  that  on  entry  the 
ravage  of  years  shall  be  undone,  and  the  ichor 
of  youth  shall  again  pulsate  in  the  veins. 

Essentials  these  of  rest ;  and  rest  holds  in 
it  the  vision  of  a  fairer  excellence  than  ever 
action  can  compass,  and,  as  Ruskin  has  said, 
man's  longing  for  it  is  at  once  evidence  of  his 
origin,  and  a  promise  of  that  reunion  when 
the  "  I  become  "  of  the  created  shall  merge 
and  be  transfigured  in  the  Creator's  "  I  Am." 

Peace  lies  beyond  the  waters.  Are  the 
waters  always  those  of  death  ? 

Our  fathers  thought  not  so  in  the  days 
when  in  the  desert  places  of  the  sea  lay 
islands  virginal  and  untrod.  When  credulity 
had  in  it  no  savour  of  reproach,  and  tradition 
was  as  a  harper  voicing  the  sea-stories  and 
wind-stories  that  now  float  round  our  ears 
intangible  and  unheeded.  Somewhere  in  the 
unknown, —  was  the  message  of  the  harper's 
song, —  east  of  the  sun  and  west  of  the  moon, 


Undiscovered  Islands  133 

or  buttressed  by  the  surges  of  the  Atlantic,  or 
far  as  "  ultimate  dim  Thule "  lay  an  island 
where  the  years  pass  and  men  wax  not  old. 
Seers  dowered  the  island  in  thought  with 
virtues  elsewhere  broken  and  inconsequent. 
Poets  sang  of  the  land  where  there  is  no  death. 

The  belief  was  common  to  many  mythol- 
ogies —  Norse,  Celtic  and  Greek  —  and  it 
survived  after  Christianity  had  spread  over 
Western  Europe. 

The  story  of  St.  Brendan,  the  Navigator, 
who  sought  for  seven  years  for  the  Land  of 
Promise,  took  rank  as  the  Christian  "  Odyssey," 
and  the  recital  of  the  perils  and  wonders  of 
his  voyage  charmed  alike  court  and  cloister; 
monks  lovingly  transcribed  the  legend  in  a 
hundred  monasteries,  and  a  Trouvere  sang  of 
it  at  the  bidding  of  Adelais  of  Louvain,  the 
Queen  of  Henry  Beauclerc. 

The  paradise  for  which  St.  Brendan  sought 
was  an  island  in  the  West.  He  may  have 
passed  near  where  the  fabled  Atlantis  sank 
beneath  the  waves. 

The  abbot  and  his  monks  reached  the  same 
islands  every  year  in  time  for  the  four  Chris- 
tian festivals,  as  was  foretold  by  a  messenger 


134  Undiscovered  Islands 

in  the  Paradise  of  Birds ;  —  fallen  angels 
these,  who  sang  on  earth  to  the  praise  of 
God  until  such  time  as  they  should  return  to 
the  skies. 

They  saw  Judas  chained  in  Promethean 
fashion  to  a  lonely  rock, —  and  there  allowed 
relief  from  the  torments  of  hell  on  each  re- 
curring Sabbath  and  on  holy  feast-days.  They 
suffered  perils  from  icebergs  and  monsters  of 
the  air  and  of  the  deep ;  and  at  length,  when 
the  seven  years  of  their  pilgrimage  were  com- 
pleted, it  was  given  unto  them  to  enter  within 
the  darkness  which  lay  about  the  land  of 
promise  of  the  saints, —  a  land  where  there 
was  no  night  at  all.  They  wandered  for  forty 
days  amid  the  fair  expanse  of  verdure,  coming 
at  last  to  the  banks  of  a  great  river  ;  there  a 
youth  of  great  beauty  appeared,  and  told  them 
that  they  might  not  cross,  bidding  them  return 
to  their  own  country. 

They  obeyed  and  returned  to  their  ship, 
and  three  months  after  leaving  Paradise, 
sighted  the  Irish  coast. 

Was  America  the  paradise  of  St.  Brendan  ? 
And  the  great  river  the  Mississippi?  And 
the  islands  those  of  the  West  Indies  ? 


Undiscovered  Islands  135 

A  tradition  among  the  Indians  in  Florida 
told  of  white  men  who  had  come  over  the  sea 
in  times  far  remote,  and  the  first  settlers  sent 
out  by  Admiral  Coligny  found  the  same  belief 
among  the  natives  of  Brazil.  These  places 
are  far  to  the  south  of  the  recorded  limits  of 
the  voyages  of  Leif  and  Biarne  and  the  later 
Norse  discoverers. 

St.  Brendan  was  born  in  A.  D.  484,  and  be- 
tween the  possible  date  of  the  voyage  and  of 
the  earliest  existent  record,  centuries  inter- 
vene. We  may  weave  fantasies,  but  we  cannot 
build, —  the  fabric  is  as  gossamer.  The  nar- 
rative may  be  only  a  monkish  adaptation  of 
the  Celtic  legend  of  the  voyage  of  Maeldune, 
from  which  some  of  the  incidents  are  derived. 
The  details  are  doubtless  imaginative ;  but 
that  St.  Brendan  did  make  voyages  to  the 
West  is  confirmed  by  Adamnan  in  his  life  of 
St.  Columba,  where  he  speaks  of  his  visit  to 
Hinba  near  lona. 

Is  it  permissible  to  accept  the  legends  of  the 
early  Church  for  the  spiritual  truths  which 
they  convey  ?  Or  when  an  abbot  after  years 
of  pilgrimage  finds  the  land  of  promise  of  the 
saints,  must  we  —  gazetteer  in  hand  —  identify 


136  Undiscovered  Islands 

it  with  a  local  habitation  and  a  name,  or  else 
refuse  all  credence?  If  so,  reason  has  itself 
become  a  fetish. 

Or  was  it  some  island  in  the  West  that 
St.  Brendan  found, —  primitive,  inviolate,  and 
therefore  a  paradise  ?  The  Spaniards  inter- 
preted the  legend  in  this  way,  and  cherished 
hopes  of  finding  again  St.  Brendan's  isle.  A 
king  of  Portugal  even  made  cession  of  it  in 
the  treaty  of  Evora,  "  s'il  la  de'couvrait." 

In  the  popular  belief  it  lay  to  the  west  of 
the  Canaries,  and  had  on  rare  occasions  been 
seen  from  the  isle  of  Palma ; —  as  on  the  Aran 
Isles  the  peasants  have  seen  the  meads  and 
palaces  of  Hy  Brasil  far  away  over  the  west- 
ern sea.  But  the  eyes  of  the  city-bred  are 
misty  or  filled  with  other  visions,  and  see 
them  not. 

These  legends, —  St.  Brendan's  and  the  like, 
—  if  they  have  no  basis  of  historic  fact  to  win 
for  them  credence,  originate  in  the  instinct 
and  abide  in  the  imagination  of  those  who 
live  within  sight  and  sound  of  the  sea ;  who, 
faring  over  great  waters,  and  learning  of  their 
changeful  magic,  of  the  elemental  fury  of  the 
tempest,  and  the  divine  soft-moving  calm, 


Undiscovered  Islands  137 

think  in  their  simplicity  that  an  island,  such 
as  the  mind  of  men  has  been  able  to  conceive 
and  the  winds  to  whisper  of,  may  not  be  a 
wonder  too  great  to  lie  hidden  in  some  unfur- 
rowed  coign  in  the  bosom  of  the  pathless 
mysterious  ocean. 

The  breath  of  tradition  made  audible  held 
the  ear,  and  guided  human  purpose :  thus  fit- 
ful attempts  were  made  to  reach  St.  Brendan's 
isle,  the  last  being  in  the  year  1723. 

Juan  Ponce  de  Leon  also,  giving  faith  to  an 
Indian  legend,  put  out  on  the  deep  to  seek 
the  isle  of  youth's  renewing ;  and  of  his  quest 
and  of  its  ending  Heine  sings.  After  a  life 
of  adventure  he  had  been  made  governor  of 
Cuba,  and  there  his  thoughts  turned  bitterly 
to  the  days  of  youth,  recalling  how  as  page  in 
the  court  of  Don  Gomez  he  had  borne  the 
train  of  the  Alcade's  daughter;  how  when  a 
courtier,  the  ladies  of  Seville  had  flocked  to 
the  windows  on  hearing  the  tramp  of  his  steed ; 
how  he  had  wrought  deeds  of  knightly  valour 
against  the  Moors ;  had  accompanied  Colum- 
bus in  his  second  voyage  to  carry  the  power 
of  the  Cross  and  of  Spain  across  the  sea  ;  had 
sailed  and  fought  under  Ojeda  and  Bilbao ; 


138  Undiscovered  Islands 

had  been  with  Cortez  when  he  had  conquered 
Mexico,  and  in  that  venture,  though  stricken 
with  fever  in  the  swamp,  had  gained  much 
treasure  of  gold  and  pearls. 

Thus  waking  the  memories  of  the  past,  all 
riches,  all  honours  that  he  had  won  seemed  to 
him  as  nothing  as  compared  with  the  fact  that 
the  vigour  of  youth  had  fled ;  and  he  prayed 
to  the  Blessed  Virgin  to  shake  wintry  age  from 
his  limbs,  to  bid  the  sun  fire  his  veins  and  the 
spring  his  breast,  to  touch  with  roses  his 
cheeks  and  his  hair  with  golden  flame,  and  to 
give  him  back  his  youth  again. 

Now  Kaka,  the  old  Indian  nurse  who  tended 
the  knight's  hammock,  was  wont  in  rocking  it 
to  sing  a  song  of  her  people  about  the  isle  of 
Bimini.  "  Fly  on,  little  birds  !  Swim  on,  little 
fishes !  "  it  ran,  "  be  our  guides  to  the  isle  of 
Bimini ;  we  follow  with  barque  all-garlanded. 
In  Bimini  the  delight  of  spring  abides  contin- 
ually, and  the  lark  is  ever  warbling  in  the 
azure.  Fair  flowers  grow  there  as  herbage, 
and  tall  palms  stretch  their  fan-like  leaves 
above  them,  making  soft,  cool  shade.  There 
springs  the  loveliest  of  all  fountains,  whence 
flows  the  water  that  makes  all  things  young. 


Undiscovered  Islands  139 

A  withered  flower  touched  with  this  water 
blooms  with  fresh  beauty,  and  a  dried  rod 
bears  leaves;  and  the  old  when  they  drink  of 
it  become  young,  shedding  the  mantle  of  age 
as  a  chafer  sheds  his  shell ;  and  they  remain 
there  always,  for  happiness  and  spring  hold 
them  enthralled.  This  land  of  eternal  youth 
is  the  goal  of  my  longing  and  desire.  Fare- 
well !  farewell !  dear  friends  of  my  homestead. 
We  return  no  more  from  Bimini." 

The  knight  heard  ever  this  song  between 
waking  and  slumber,  and  the  strain  would 
mingle  with  his  dreams,  so  that  he  murmured 
in  sleep  of  Bimini ;  and  by-and-by  he  decided 
to  go  in  search  of  this  Bimini  that  he  might 
drink  of  the  promised  water.  Many,  hearing 
of  his  purpose,  were  minded  to  go  with  him, 
so  that  a  fleet  of  five  sail  was  fitted  out. 
Others  who  remained  behind  through  fear  of 
the  perils  of  the  voyage  besought  them  that 
having  found  Bimini,  they  would  return  and 
give  them  to  drink  of  the  water,  that  they  too 
might  be  young  again. 

So  with  banners  flying  and  the  salute  of 
many  cannon,  they  sailed  away  on  their 
quest. 


140  Undiscovered  Islands 

The  chroniclers  who  tell  of  the  expedition 
of  Ponce  de  Leon,  say  that  he  failed  to  find 
Bimini,  but  discovered  Florida ;  and  that  there 
the  old  days  of  fighting  as  under  Cortez  were 
renewed,  and  that  after  gaming  fresh  treasure 
and  renown,  he  was  wounded  by  the  Indians, 
and  returned  to  Cuba  to  die. 

It  would  seem  that  the  thirst  for  adventure 
was  still  uppermost,  and  the  fountain  of  youth 
was  only  desired  as  a  means  to  indulge  it. 
His  hand  still  itched  for  the  pommel  of  the 
sword,  by  which  he  had  lived  and  by  which 
he  died.  It  may  have  been  that  he  regarded 
the  fighting  in  Florida  merely  as  an  interlude, 
and  even  as  death  found  him  he  was  in  thought 
preparing  to  resume  his  quest.  Ideals  once 
formed  are  hardly  ever  quite  abandoned,  how- 
ever action  may  digress.  They  will  issue 
forth  on  a  sudden  from  some  disused  thought- 
chamber  and  startle  us  with  their  strangeness; 
and  seeing  the  vision  of  our  past  endeavour 
we  turn  to  follow  it.  Complete  disillusion  or 
attainment  are  alike  rare,  and  it  is  merciful 
that  our  imaginings  abide,  and  that  we  travel 
on  to  the  grave  dreaming  of  things  we  know 
not  of. 


Undiscovered  Islands  141 

Heine  has  more  of  the  truth  than  the 
chroniclers  in  his  description  of  the  ending  of 
Ponce  de  Leon's  voyage  :  — 

"  And  he  sought  for  youth's  renewal 
Ever  daily  growing  older, 
And  all  wrinkled,  worn,  and  wasted, 
Came  at  last  unto  that  land, 

"  To  that  silent  land,  where  chilly 
Under  shadowy  cypresses 
Plows  a  stream,  whereof  the  water 
Hath  a  wondrous  power  of  healing. 

"  Lethe  is  the  water  named, 
Drink  of  it  and  thou  forgettest 
AH  thy  sorrows  :  yea  !  forgotten 
Wilt  be  thou  and  all  thy  troubles. 

"  Blessed  water  I  blessed  land! 
He  who  reaches  it  forsakes  it 
Never  more :  —  the  land  of  Lethe 
Is  the  real  Bimini." 


VI 
DEO  SOLI  INVICTO 

"  Who  doth  ambition  shun, 
And  loves  to  live  i '  the  sun.  .  .  . 
Come  hither,  come  hither,  come  hither" 

AY,  but  you  shall  keep  pact  in  com- 
ing, exile  of  the  greenwood  !  Though 
you  would  still  palter  with  the  in- 
firmity—  here  the  air  is  alien  and  it  shall  find 
no  nurture.  Corn  and  wine  for  you  —  the 
lotos  in  Lotos-land.  You  shall  shun  ambition 
in  forgetting,  and  it  shall  wither  parched  in 
the  sunshine.  Sun-steeped  the  days  of  your 
tarrying  —  wave  and  woodland  smitten  through 
with  sunlight  —  glowing  and  trembling  in 
ecstasy.  You  too,  of  mood  ecstatic.  For  you 
shall  "  live  i'  the  sun "  I  warrant  you,  and 
worship  him  with  every  fibre  of  your  being. 
If  Arden  of  the  greenwood  this, —  an  island 
Arden,  and  therein  the  meeter  for  exile,  and 


Deo  Soli  Invicto  143 

for  the  sway  of  the  sun-god  to  work  wonder- 
ment. See  his  domain  more  closely ! 

It  is  an  island  about  five  miles  long  and  two 
miles  wide.  The  coast  rock-precipice  for  the 
most  part ;  with  two  landing-places, —  Marinas 
little  and  big  —  though  neither  big  enough  for 
anything  more  than  a  fishing-boat  to  come  to 
shore.  A  welcome  there  if  not  an  anchorage, 
and  on  landing  at  such  port  as  the  isle  affords, 
you  are  met  by  a  crowd  of  eager  islanders  — 
eager  not  to  know  what  news  you  bring,  but 
only  that  you  stay  and  dwell  among  them. 

Rough  paths  strike  up  the  hillside,  and  wind- 
ing steeply  amid  orange  groves  and  the  mossed 
walls  of  vineyards,  soon  arrive  at  the  capital. 

From  the  big  Marina  a  carriage-road  starts 
on  the  same  journey,  and  wanders  more  devi- 
ously and  deliberately  in  the  pretence  that 
there  is  really  hardly  any  hill  at  all.  In  about 
half-an-hour  it  also  arrives  at  the  capital  look- 
ing quite  as  hot  and  much  more  dusty  than 
the  paths,  and  enters  the  gate  with  a  rather 
dejected  air,  seeming  to  say  that  had  it  known 
before  starting  what  a  tumble-down  irregular 
unkempt  sort  of  village  the  capital  would 
prove  to  be,  it  would  never  have  taken  the 


144  Deo  Soli  Invicto 

trouble  to  come  to  it  from  the  big  Marina  and 
the  fishing-boats  and  the  daily  steamer,  and 
so  indirectly  from  the  ocean-highways  from 
numerous  points  all  over  the  earth's  surface. 
Being  there,  however,  it  wanders  about  to 
see  any  sights  that  may  be  worth  seeing ;  and 
having  to  stoop  under  low  arches,  and  be 
wedged  in  between  houses  which  ignore  its 
existence  and  try  to  meet  above  it,  and  only 
finding  a  breathing-space  in  the  market-place, 
it  finally  turns  away  and  climbs  with  some  dif- 
ficulty the  side  of  the  taller  of  the  two  hills 
between  which  the  capital  lies  ensconced.  On 
reaching  a  city  on  the  hillside,  it  stops  alto- 
gether, lost  in  an  ecstasy  of  contemplation, 
and  indeed  the  view  over-sea  is  so  varied,  so 
infinite,  so  beautiful,  that  there  would  be  the 
rather  cause  for  wonder  if  it  ever  came  away 
and  after  looking  there  partook  again  of  things 
less  lovely.  For  to  be  always  going  on  is  surely 
only  the  settled  indolence  of  habit,  and  it  is 
quite  as  useful,  and  infinitely  more  pleasing 
for  those  who  travel  on  them  that  some  roads 
should,  as  the  end  of  their  activities,  contem- 
plate Naples,  and  not  all  crowd  unnecessarily 
towards  Rome. 


Deo  Soli  Invicto  145 

Leave  it  contemplating  1  And  let  us  glance 
at  a  few  characteristics  of  the  island's  story. 
They  are  as  tapestry  silk-woven,  shot  through 
and  through  with  sunlight.  Warp  and  woof 
they  glitter,  they  change  hue  as  you  mark 
them.  Fact  turns  fantasy.  It  must  surely  be 
undiscovered,  for  they  touch  the  fantastic. 

The  beauty  of  its  women  folk  is  manifest 
and  historic,  and  as  such  exceeds  description. 
Emperors  and  kings  have  built  palaces  there. 
Pirates  have  enriched  it  with  their  presence. 
They  are  said  to  have  contributed  indirectly 
in  suggesting  the  present  site  of  the  capital  by 
demonstrating  how  inadvisable  it  was  that  it 
should  be  any  nearer  to  the  landing-places. 
The  buccaneers  would  doubtless  have  come 
if  it  had  been  a  real  isle  of  fantasy,  but  their 
absence  can  hardly  have  been  remarked  by 
the  islanders,  so  effective  were  they  who  came 
in  their  stead.  More  romantic  perhaps,  more 
alluringly  inexplicable,  the  buccaneers  of  the 
Caribbean — but  for  consistency  in  piratical  en- 
deavour match  who  can  the  Barbary  Corsairs ! 

Another  chapter  dealing  of  combats,  the 
writers  of  the  island's  story  derive  pleasantly 
enough  from  the  open  book  of  games. 


146  Deo  Soli  Invicto 

It  tells  how  two  travelling  companies  played 
together  at  French  and  English.  They  had  all 
the  stock  accessories,  and  played  just  as  the 
game  always  is  played  on  an  island  —  with 
intercepted  convoys  of  provisions,  and  a 
beleaguered  garrison,  hungry  and  finally  capit- 
ulating —  and  with  an  unguarded  pathway  up 
the  cliff  for  the  attacking  company,  up  which 
they  scrambled  by  night  and  had  a  big  can- 
nonade. There  was  even  a  fleet  in  an  offing 
—  becalmed  there  of  course,  and  consequently 
unable  to  come  and  relieve  the  beleaguered 
garrison  ;  but  it  was  a  happy  thought  to  put  it 
there  and  add  to  the  possibilities  of  conjecture. 
The  breeze  might  spring  up ;  the  fleet  might 
move ;  in  a  few  hours  it  might  be  in  action 
and  place  the  besiegers  between  two  fires. 
And  so  they  knew  that  it  was  not  a  time  to 
spare  powder. 

The  issue  of  the  contest  was  regrettable, 
and  quite  contrary  to  the  best  traditions  of 
the  game.  The  breeze  grew  interested  and 
tried  to  help  both  sides.  It  brought  the  fleet 
quite  near  and  then  turned  round  suddenly 
and  drove  it  away,  and  on  coming  back  with 
it  after  a  few  days,  found  that  it  had  over-esti- 


Deo  Soli  Invicto  147 

mated  the  staying  power  of  the  garrison  and 
that  the  game  was  ended.  The  English  were 
the  garrison  and  the  French  were  the  besieg- 
ers and  consequently  the  ending  was  incorrect. 
This  proves  that  it  is  merely  a  record  of  fact 
and  of  righting.  The  wind  that  blows  around 
the  isles  of  fantasy  would  have  surely  blown 
otherwise.  But  personally  I  do  n't  much  regret 
that  the  ending  was  incorrect.  English  garri- 
sons have  a  habit  of  remaining,  and  but  for 
the  issue  of  this  contest  they  might  have  dis- 
covered that  the  island  was  indeed  on  the  road 
to  Nowhere,  but  that  Nowhere  was  a  far  port 
to  steam  to,  and  that  it  would  be  well  to  have 
a  coaling-station  on  the  road.  And  then  they 
or  their  successors  would  be  there  still,  and 
the  island  would  be  nothing  like  so  picturesque 
or  peaceful  as  it  is  at  present. 

No !  I  do  n't  in  the  least  regret  their  depar- 
ture. Who  could  regret  it  at  sight  of  the  island 
now  trembling  and  glowing  in  the  sunlight  ? 
Who  could  regret  the  fighting  either  or  anything 
that  has  ever  happened  there  ?  For  all  these 
doings  dark  or  fantastic  have  been  but  the  pre- 
cursors of  this  present,  and  as  such  become  fair 
in  reminiscence  in  the  wonder  of  the  sunlight. 


148  Deo  Soli  Invicto 

The  turbid  waters  have  settled  now  in  calm. 
The  records  of  the  island's  story  tell  no  more 
of  fighting.  The  militia  even  look  peaceful 
when  they  meet.  They  meet  so  rarely  that 
the  swords  must  surely  ere  this  have  been 
turned  into  pruning-hooks,  and  so  it  is  in 
the  vineyards  that  they  have  prepared  for  the 
invader,  and  he  for  his  part  has  come  with 
like  friendliness. 

Amid  the  runnels  of  the  hills  are  olives  and 
cytisus,  and  almonds  pale  and  radiant  in  blos- 
som as  sun-flushed  snow.  Round  and  about 
are  tumbling  ruins  and  towers  dismantled  and 
the  rubble  of  old-time  masonry.  Here  is  a 
roofless  crumbling  shepherd's  hut,  there  the 
fragments  of  a  Roman  watch-tower.  Alike 
they  moulder  in  the  sunlight,  and  the  brown 
lizards  wriggle  among  the  flat  stones  of  either 
impartially  or  lie  burnishing  their  backs  in  the 
heat. 

A  deep  dark  blue  of  sea  and  sky  —  scarce 
varying  in  hue  —  the  one  limitless,  quiescent, 
changing  imperceptibly  from  night  to  day,  the 
other  ever  moving  and  murmuring,  touched  in 
iridescence  by  sun  and  star.  And  the  sea  on 
the  rocks  has  worn  grottoes  with  roofs  and 


Deo  Soli  Invicto  149 

walls  of  strange  colouring  of  agate  and  red 
sea-lichen.  But  of  these,  the  blue  grotto  sur- 
passes in  beauty  all  the  rest,  for  the  sea  and 
sky  have  combined  to  give  it  of  their  colour, 
filling  the  misty  cave  with  quivering  phosphor- 
escent light. 

The  mention  of  the  blue  grotto  surely  places 
the  identity  of  the  island  beyond  cavil  or  ques- 
tioning. 

Sirens,  palaces,  pirates  and  fighting  —  these 
are  the  accessories  of  numberless  islands,  some 
in  either  hemisphere,  others  in  the  seas  delec- 
table "cast  beyond  the  moon,"  to  be  found  or 
no,  as  the  wind  may  list,  but  assuredly  to  be 
sought  for ;  but  seek  how  you  will,  there  is  only 
one  blue  grotto,  and  the  island  is  quite  easy  to 
be  discovered,  because  of  course  it  is  Capri. 

Capri  is  quite  as  real  as  the  Isle  of  Thanet. 
And  the  Sirens  dwelt  there  and  sang  to  Ulys- 
ses. It  was  either  there  they  sang  or  else  on 
the  rocks  that  lie  to  the  south  of  the  headland 
facing  Capri,  and  Ulysses  must  have  heard 
their  singing  as  he  passed  through  the  strait. 
His  wanderings  are  about  as  historic  as  the 
landing  of  Hengist  and  Horsa,  and  as  of  Ulys- 
ses it  is  not  claimed  that  he  landed,  we  may 


150  Deo  Soli  Invicto 

fairly  be  content  with  less  proof  of  his  pres- 
ence. However,  admitting  the  Sirens  to  be 
mythical,  there  is  no  doubt  about  the  reality 
of  Tiberius  and  the  palaces,  or  of  Barbarossa's 
castle  and  the  visits  of  the  Saracen  pirates, 
and  the  French  and  English  did  certainly 
fight  there,  and  the  English  were  undoubtedly 
defeated.  They  were  commanded  by  Sir  Hud- 
son Lowe  of  St.  Helena  fame,  and  they  held 
the  island  for  Ferdinand  IV,  the  Bourbon 
King  of  Naples,  after  the  French  had  already 
started  Italy  as  a  group  of  republics  with  fan- 
ciful nomenclature,  and  were  carving  it  up 
again  into  kingdoms.  The  French  captured 
the  island  through  a  night  attack  almost  as 
brilliant  as  the  storming  of  the  heights  of 
Abraham,  and  at  the  critical  juncture  the  Brit- 
ish fleet  lay  becalmed  off  Ponza. 

So  the  carriage  road  which  we  followed  from 
the  Marina  up  to  Ana  Capri  and  there  left 
contemplating,  did  indeed  look  on  the  real 
Naples.  Real  and  yet  too  fair  for  reality  as 
seen  far  away  over  miles  of  gracious  silent 
sea  —  a  water-lily  resting  on  the  marge  —  the 
fairest  of  the  flowers  that  girdle  the  bay  with 
beauty.  For  the  cities  there  all  seem  as  flow- 


Deo  Soli  Invicto  151 

ers :  Massa,  the  little  sea-pink  on  the  rocks, 
Sorrento,  cool  and  muffled  in  orange  groves, 
Torre  del  Greco  and  Torre  Annunziata,  roses 
lying  on  Vesuvius'  mantle,  happy,  forgetful  of 
Pompeii,  as  the  rose  forgetful  of  the  rose  of 
yester-year,  and  the  lily's  bud  Posilipo,  and 
Pozzuoli,  a  marsh-flower  on  the  waste  where 
the  Mantuan  found  Avernus.  They  seem  as 
flowers  up-tilted  to  the  sun.  And  Capri,  the 
centre  flower,  cupped  with  green,  up-tilted, 
up-straining  —  more  than  a  flower  —  a  sanctu- 
ary. What  wonder  if  its  story  be  the  record 
of  things  fantastic ! 

There  are  temples  there,  of  faiths  passed 
over.  Tiberius  built  twelve  during  the  years 
of  his  retirement ;  to  his  gods  presumably 
dedicate,  —  or  in  inception  merely  palaces  of 
pleasure  such  as  that  in  Xanadu.  Tiberius's 
doings  in  them  were  certainly  not  calculated 
to  propitiate  any  deities  whomsoever.  Some 
fragments  remain,  —  notably  the  huge  ruins 
of  the  Villa  Jovis  —  a  mass  of  crumbling  walls 
and  arches,  luxuriant  in  broken  marbles  and 
mosaics.  And  nature  has  encompassed  it  with 
a  perennial  veil  of  beauty,  and  it  has  lain  there 
for  nigh  two  thousand  years  crumbling  and 


152  Deo  Soli  Invicto 

mellowing,  —  and  yet  withal  it  seems  an 
exotic. 

Whether  it  be  palace  or  temple  it  is  alien 
to  the  inner  history  of  the  island,  as  alien  as 
Tiberius  and  all  the  Emperors.  And  Jove  as  a 
tutelary  deity  is  of  power  more  finite  than  the 
builder.  For  Tiberius  is  still  a  little  bit  alive, 
and  being  more  discriminating  now  than  in  the 
days  of  vanity,  is  only  a  terror  to  evildoers. 
They  know  of  Timberio.  Just  as  the  Arab 
children,  years  after  the  Crusades  were  ended, 
knew  that  King  Richard  still  rode  in  Pales- 
tine, and  trembled  at  night  to  think  of  it.  But 
evildoers  are  so  rare  in  Capri  that  Timberio's 
appearance  must  needs  be  infrequent.  It  was 
this  Tiberius  Caesar  whose  friend  Pilate  had 
preferred  to  be ;  and  to  the  Villa  Jovis  had 
been  brought  the  news  of  the  Crucifixion,  and 
he  had  willed  to  enrol  the  Galilean  among 
the  Gods. 

Gods  outworn  !  Emperors  dead  and  phan- 
tasmal 1  Temples  ruined  and  forsaken  !  Yet 
is  the  island  still  a  sanctuary. 

There  is  a  cave  on  the  eastern  hill.  A  tem- 
ple alike  rifled  and  bare  of  sacrifice,  but  daily 
the  god  still  visits  it,  daily  walks  over  the  water 


Deo  Soli  Invicto  153 

golden-footed,  and  fills  the  cave  with  his  pres- 
ence, and  touches  the  site  of  his  altar  with 
flame.  Daily  —  even  as  he  has  come  for  oh  ! 
how  many  thousand  years  before  ever  men  built 
altars  of  sacrifice !  He  knew  the  cave  before 
ever  his  shrine  was  there,  and  he  knows  the 
whole  island,  and  daily  traverses  it  tutelary  and 
benignant,  and  he  gives  to  the  vine  its  fruit 
and  to  the  hills  their  verdure,  and  to  the 
islanders  harvest  of  their  works  and  content- 
ment in  the  measure  of  their  days.  At  his 
touch  cobwebs  glitter  in  caprice  of  light,  and 
in  his  presence  the  facts  of  the  island's  story, 
the  memories  of  the  doings  of  dead  men,  of 
their  comings  and  goings  and  fightings,  be- 
come fair  in  retrospect,  take  on  the  glamour 
of  dream  as  deeds  done  only  in  some  visionary 
day.  To-day  seems  a  vision  in  the  wonder  of 
the  sunlight,  and  to-morrow  a  mist  of  the  sun 
re-risen,  and  yesterday  a  mist  or  vision  of  some 
extinguished  sun. 

Mithras  !  Mithras  !  Lord  and  giver  of  light, 
the  giver  of  all  the  gifts  of  light !  Mithras  ! 
The  unconquered  God  of  the  Sun  !  And  this 
is  his  temple,  this  cavern  in  the  eastern  cliff, 
outpost  of  the  Persian's  faith.  Built  perhaps 


154  Deo  Soli  Invicto 

by  wanderers  from  the  East  before  the  days  of 
the  Caesars,  before  ever  Rome,  world-weary, 
and  weary  of  her  own  gods,  had  stooped 
to  learn  of  her  tributaries  and  to  gather  of 
their  faiths,  —  and  thus  learning  had  wavered 
between  Mithras  and  Christ. 

The  fiat  had  gone  forth.  Even  the  Apostate 
testified  to  the  conquest  of  the  Galilean,  and 
Rome  put  away  the  hesitance  of  Constantine, 
and  in  His  service  resumed  her  strength.  But 
Rome  was  ever  in  the  forefront.  There  are 
scenes  where  time  touches  more  softly,  where 
old  customs  abide  and  old  faiths  linger,  and 
change  is  gradual,  almost  imperceptible,  truth 
to  truth  added,  radiance  upon  radiance  revealed. 

There  are  eyes,  —  would-be  eyes  of  faith  — 
which  despite  all  their  straining  see  as  yet  no 
farther  than  the  sun. 

Mithras  may  wander  regretful  as  Pan  in  the 
woodland,  —  gods  forgotten  of  worship  —  and 
yet  in  Capri  he  is  not  an  exile.  They  who 
served  him  of  old  served  him  with  penance 
and  oblation,  and  the  worshippers  gathered  in 
his  temple  waited  while  the  priests  made  sac- 
rifice, and  together  they  watched  and  waited 
for  the  coming  of  the  light. 


Deo  Soli  Invicto  155 

And  the  light  came,  and  looking  down  the 
scarp  of  the  cliff  over  the  pathway  of  the  light 
across  the  whitening  sea,  to  where  the  sun  had 
just  risen  above  the  Calabrian  hills,  they  would 
see  the  marbles  of  Paestum  gleaming  white  on 
the  shore. 

We  may  stand  in  the  entrance  to  the  cav- 
ern to-day  and  look  from  the  one  to  the  other 

—  the  temple  of  the  Sun-god  of  the  Persians 
and  the  temples  of  the  gods  of  Greece.     And 
"both  were  faiths  and  both  are  gone,"  and  the 
sea  between  seems  not  to  sever  but  to  unite 
them  by  its  murmur,  linking  together  in  mem- 
ory things  forsaken. 

The  works  done  in  their  faiths  survive  them. 
The  seed  of  beauty  broke  from  the  heart  of 
the  rose  and  passed  immortal  from  one  frail 
dwelling  to  another.  Greek  roses  bloomed  in 
Italian  soil  long  after  that  the  Paestan  marbles 
were  forsaken  and  they  grew  no  more  beneath 
their  shadow.  Persian  roses,  —  the  murmur 
of  their  leaves  in  falling  was  ever  of  transience 

—  of  the  transience  of  things  beautiful  and  the 
passing  of  the  sun-lit  revel  of  life.    And  to-day 
the  roses  are  blooming  at  Naishapur  on  Omar's 
grave,  and  Omar's  own  rose  grafted  on   an 


156  Deo  Soli  Invicto 

English  stem,  after  nigh  a  thousand  years, 
seem  to  have  just  this  summer's  fragrance  and 
to  mock  his  questioning. 

Mithras's  temple  is  deserted  and  the  wor- 
ship of  all  these  things  has  passed.  Yet  for  the 
Sun-god's  daily  beneficence,  surely  it  is  meet 
that  we  should  praise  him  !  Not  with  myste- 
ries as  of  old ;  the  time  of  sacrifice  was  and  is 
not.  The  hilltop,  not  the  grotto  !  The  hill- 
top of  his  own  island  —  presence  chamber  of 
the  unconquered  God  of  the  Sun  ! 

There  look  down  from  the  crest  of  Monte 
Solaro  —  to  the  south  the  island  drops  majes- 
tically to  the  sea,  and  lies  on  its  surface 
mirrored  and  motionless,  the  sea  beneath  it 
treasuring  in  translucent  pools  infinite  wealth 
of  colour  and  of  form,  and  all  around  else  the 
island  slopes  away  in  ripple  and  wave  of  ver- 
dure down  to  the  silver  presence  of  the  olives 
and  the  white  and  grey  of  the  towns,  —  and 
beyond  is  the  still  sea,  and  beyond  the  circlets 
of  the  bays,  white  with  cities  and  green  with 
promise  of  the  vine  —  and  over  all  the  gracious 
presence  of  the  sun. 

"  The  earth  and  ocean  seem 
To  sleep  in  one  another's  arms  and  dream 


Deo  Soli  Invicto  157 

Of  waves,  flowers,  clouds,  woods,  rocks,  and  all 

that  we 
Read  in  their  smiles,  and  call  reality" 

Is  it  all  a  moment's  fantasy,  this  beauty,  this 
tremor,  this  ecstasy,  the  mirage  of  our  vision 
—  real  only  in  that  we  behold  it  ?  Or  are  we 
alone  momentary  —  shadows  questioning  sun- 
light—  and  to-morrow  the  same  sunlight,  the 
same  beauty  of  earth  and  ocean,  to-morrow 
and  all  the  to-morrows  all  unchanged,  save 
that  other  shadows  thrown  by  the  sun  in  his 
pathway  will  be  trembling  at  first  at  the 
strangeness  as  shadows  do,  and  then  turning 
to  follow  him. 

Our  strength  is  of  his  strength :  our  moods 
of  pleasure  are  of  his  radiance.  Surely  it  is 
meet  that  we  should  praise  him  ! 

Clots  of  sun-illumined  clay !  fanned  by  sun- 
beams to  a  brief  rapture  of  life,  to  a  moment's 
seeming  of  being  and  begetting.  Breathed 
upon  by  the  wind  so  that  we  live.  In  the  fact 
of  our  existence  a  sum  of  the  sacrifices  which 
all  created  things  have  made  and  are  ever 
making  for  us. 

And  withal  life  is  a  thing  pitifully  fragile. 
Even  a  watch  has  more  self-reliance,  for  when 


158  Deo  Soli  Invicto 

wound  up  it  runs  its  course  with  composure 
for  twenty-four  hours,  quietly  and  steadily  and 
with  accuracy  sufficient  even  for  purposes  of 
business.  How  many  helps  we  have  to  have 
to-day  to  enable  us  to  take  our  turn  to-morrow 
in  equal  freshness !  How  many  hours  of  sleep- 
ing and  eating  and  resting  disconnect  the  brief 
periods  of  life  when  we  are  actually  doing ! 
As  with  one  day  so  with  all ;  a  third  of  life  is 
spent  motionless  in  the  counterfeit  semblance 
of  death,  the  brain  fluttered  by  strange  visions, 
the  body,  wearied  with  a  few  hours  of  action, 
seeking  in  sleep  refreshment  for  the  next  stage 
of  the  journey.  A  very  disconnected  under- 
taking, and  one  requiring  stimulus  more  than 
commensurate  with  result. 

He  is  not  a  jealous  god,  the  God  of  the  Sun. 
We  huddle  together  in  cities  and  serve  Baal, 
and  the  smoke  of  our  abominations  is  as  a 
cloud  veiling  us  from  his  sight,  and  by  the 
works  of  our  own  hands  we  are  shut  from  his 
presence.  In  his  presence  alone  is  strength, 
and  the  huddled  life  is  a  poor,  a  half-extin- 
guished thing.  And  we  repent,  and  go  out 
humbly  and  seek  him  in  his  courts,  and  he  for- 
gives us  and  heals  us.  And  we  go  back  to  the 


Deo  Soli  Invicto  159 

smoke  of  our  works.  And  again  we  seek  him 
and  again  he  forgives  us,  and  the  flame  of  life 
burns  brightly  as  before,  or  the  spent  flame 
flickers  with  something  of  its  old  brightness. 

Surely  it  is  meet  that  we  should  praise  him, 
for  whomsoever  we  praise  it  is  to  the  music  of 
his  pipings,  and  we  should  have  but  short 
shrift  if  he  ceased  to  shine. 

How  nearly  this  once  did  happen,  Leopardi 
is  our  authority  for  describing.  The  first  hour 
of  the  day  went  to  waken  the  sun  as  usual, 
and  the  sun  declined  to  rise.  He  was  in  per- 
fect health,  but  was  weary  of  always  going  to 
and  fro  to  make  light  for  animalculae,  and 
they  might  shift  for  themselves.  The  dire 
consequences  which  this  resolve  would  occa- 
sion were  urged  upon  him  quite  unavailingly. 
He  took  no  interest  in  the  existence  or  non- 
existence  of  humanity.  If  they  wanted  his 
light,  they  must  come  and  get  it.  The  morn- 
ing hour  pointed  out  that  the  earth  was  not  in 
the  least  likely  to  feel  any  more  energetic 
about  the  matter  than  his  Excellency,  and  that 
after  many  years  of  inactivity  she  would 
require  much  persuasion  before  consenting  to 
move,  and  perhaps  a  poet  or  philosopher 


160  Deo  Soli  Invicto 

might  be  of  service  in  persuading  her.  The 
sun  thought  a  philosopher  would  be  of  more 
use  than  a  poet,  but  it  would  be  hard  to  say 
why  the  earth  should  allow  herself  to  be  per- 
suaded by  either.  So  the  last  hour  of  the 
night  went  to  Copernicus,  who  was  on  his 
terrace  looking  for  the  sunrise,  and  explained 
the  predicament,  and  brought  him  back  to 
discuss  the  matter. 

Very  reluctantly  he  undertook  to  do  what 
he  could,  expecting  to  be  burnt  for  his  inter- 
ference, but  this  the  sun  said  he  might  avoid 
by  dedicating  his  suggestions  to  the  Pope. 

There  the  dialogue  ends.  But  the  sunlight 
in  my  room  tells  me  that  some  working  agree- 
ment was  arrived  at,  and  the  same  sunlight 
makes  me  hope  that  it  will  be  a  long  time 
before  the  agreement  again  comes  up  for 
revision. 

And  oh !  despite  all  the  musings  of  poets 
and  philosophers  upon  the  inconsequence  of 
life,  if  we,  dreaming  in  the  sunlight,  came  to 
believe  —  what  of  course  we  never  shall  believe 
—  that  the  whole  matter  had  been  on  the  verge 
of  ending,  that  we  and  all  our  dreams  had  lain 
but  as  a  feather  in  the  balance,  outweighed 


Deo  Soli  In-victo  161 

by  the  momentary  reluctance  of  the  sun,  then 
life  being  a  thing  pleasurable  even  in  the 
continuity  of  complaining,  and  our  hold  upon 
it  being  no  whit  the  less  firm  in  intention  as 
the  horizon  becomes  more  limited  and  the 
tenure  more  frail,  perhaps  we  should  even 
turn  again  to  penance  and  oblation,  perhaps  — 
who  knows  ?  —  Mithras  coming  to  his  temple 
at  dawn  would  find  it  swept  and  garnished  — 
and  tenanted. 


VII 
THE  RING  OF  CANACE 

IEGFRIED  by  tasting  dragon's 
blood  became  endued  with  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  speech  of  birds,  and  at 
once  the  wood  became  a  wood  of  voices  warn- 
ing him  of  the  treachery  of  Mime  the  Smith. 

We  are  no  longer  credulous  of  secrets  won 
by  tasting  the  dragon's  blood,  and  the  under- 
standing of  bird-speech  has  been  put  away 
with  the  dragons  among  outworn  fantasies. 

Girt  about  by  brambles  more  impassable, 
wrapped  in  slumber  more  timeless,  more  invio- 
late, than  ever  lay  sleeping  beauty  in  enchanted 
thicket,  are  the  beliefs  and  superstitions  of 
the  age  that  is  past  and  that  we  call  mediaeval. 
We  cannot  enter,  we  cannot  waken,  but  as  we 
may  to  make  questioning  let  us  consider  what 
impelled  some  of  those  who  wandered  in  the 
wood  of  voices,  and  the  talismans  they  bore, 
and  the  manner  of  singing  that  they  heard. 


The  Ring  of  Canace  163 

The  wood  now  seems  to  the  infrequent 
passer-by  a  wood  of  brambles,  —  a  maze  path- 
less and  thickly  overgrown,  where  cobwebs 
have  made  a  mist  of  the  sunlight,  —  and  if  he 
has  strayed  within,  the  burs  have  clung  to 
him,  and  the  brambles  have  caught  his  foot- 
steps, and  the  mouldering  leaves  have  seemed 
dank  and  noisome,  and  he  has  wearied  of 
dead  decaying  things,  and  boskage  shade,  and 
has  gone  back  to  the  highway. 

When  the  leaves  that  now  moulder  were 
green  the  wood  had  many  pathways,  and 
those  who  wandered  there  told  strange  stories 
of  how  the  paths  converged  on  a  gateway, 
and  within  were  glades  where  were  heard  the 
sounds  of  strange  music,  for  the  singing  of 
birds  and  the  speech  of  beasts,  and  the 
murmur  of  plants  were  all  in  a  tongue  which 
the  visitant  might  hear  and  answer,  and  thus 
communing  with  nature's  many  voices  they 
shared  in  the  knowledge  of  her  mystery  in  the 
days  when  the  woods  had  pathways. 

Movement  and  rest,  sound  and  silence,  a 
gathering  in  strength  to  the  meridian,  and  a 
decline  to  sunset  —  they  are  common  to  all 
the  forms  of  life,  varying  only  in  the  time  of 


164  The  Ring  of  Canace 

gathering  strength  or  combating  decay,  and 
the  manner  of  movement  or  of  sound. 

So  instinct  revealed  to  man  his  kinship 
with  all  created  things  that  in  the  space 
between  their  birth  and  death  revel  and  wax 
strong  in  the  sunlight  and  tremble  before  the 
fury  of  the  tempest,  and  are  alike  resolved 
into  dust  when  the  life-principle  passes  in 
mystery  away. 

So  there  was  fashioned  forth  in  primitive 
traditions  a  golden  age  in  which  the  speech  of 
all  living  creatures  had  been  plain,  for  as  we 
read  in  an  Esthonian  folk-tale,  "at  first  not 
only  men  but  even  beasts  enjoyed  the  gift  of 
speech ;  nowadays  there  are  but  few  people 
who  understand  beast-language,  or  hearken  to 
their  communications." 

Legends  —  the  day-dreams  of  the  age  of 
instinct  —  told  of  some  who  in  time  past  had 
gained  this  knowledge,  of  others  gifted  with 
the  power  from  birth;  and  in  these  legends 
the  understanding  of  the  songs  of  birds 
took  preeminence  by  the  fascination  of  their 
beauty. 

Belief  in  its  possibility  found  expression  in 
folk-tales,  in  the  Eddas,  and  in  beast-fables. 


The  Ring  of  Canace  165 

The  Koran  attributes  to  Solomon  a  knowl- 
edge of  bird-language,  and  Balkis,  Queen  of 
Sheba,  made  her  lapwing  her  messenger  to 
tell  him  of  her  love.  The  car  of  Alexander  is 
represented  in  legend  as  attended  by  magicians 
who,  possessing  this  knowledge,  revealed  the 
future.  Melampus's  ears  were  licked  by 
serpents'  tongues,  and  thus  cleansed  they 
understood  bird-language,  and  by  this  power 
of  divination  he  was  a  soothsayer  of  high 
repute  in  all  Argos.  From  this  source  the 
oracle  Tiresias  prophesied,  and  Cassandra 
drew  her  unregarded  lore. 

The  knowledge  thus  revealed  on  occasion 
to  priests  and  kings  was  shared  by  them  with 
children,  and  as  type  of  these  legends  we  may 
select  that  of  the  boy  who  became  Pope. 

A  man  hears  a  nightingale  singing  and  is 
filled  with  desire  to  know  the  meaning  of  its 
song.  His  son  says  he  knows,  but  is  afraid 
to  tell.  He  is  compelled  to  say,  and  it  is  that 
he  shall  be  served  by  his  parents,  that  his 
father  shall  bring  water  for  him,  and  his  mother 
shall  wash  his  feet.  The  father  orders  his  ser- 
vants to  slay  him,  or  in  some  versions  of  the 
story  he  is  thrown  into  the  sea  in  an  oak  chest. 


1 66  The  Ring  of  Canace 

He  is  saved,  travels  into  a  distant  country, 
interprets  the  predictions  of  some  ravens  and 
is  elected  Pope.  There  are  Breton,  Basque, 
Slavonic  and  other  versions  of  the  story.  In 
some  versions  the  ravens  do  not  predict  that  the 
boy  shall  be  Pope,  but  are  busy  with  a  dispute, 
and  by  interpreting  it  to  the  king  he  is 
advanced  to  a  high  position  in  the  court. 
What  all  the  versions  have  in  common  is  the 
fulfilment  of  the  prediction  of  the  nightingale 
that  the  father  and  mother  shall  do  acts  of 
service  for  their  son. 

Passing  from  legend  wherein  the  interest 
still  centres  entirely  with  things  human,  and 
bird-utterance  is  somewhat  similar  to  the  utter- 
ance of  the  chorus  in  Greek  tragedy,  —  the 
attitude  being  that  of  sympathetic  spectators 
prophesying  obscurely  of  the  development  of 
the  drama  they  are  watching,  but  telling 
nothing  of  themselves  and  their  loves  and 
hates,  —  let  us  consider  the  secrets  of  the 
bird-kingdom  which  the  magic  ring  revealed 
to  Canace  when  she  walked  with  her  ladies  in 
the  park  at  daybreak.  And  to  this  end  let  us 

"  Call  up  him  who  left  half-told 
The  story  of  Cambuscan  bold, 


The  Ring  of  Canace  167 

Of  Camball  and  of  Algarsife, 

And  who  had  Canace  to  wife, 

That  owned  the  virtuous  ring  and  glass  ; 

And  of  the  wondrous  horse  of  brass 

On  which  the  Tartar  king  did  ride." 

In  "  The  Squieres  Tale  "  Chaucer  tells  how 
Cambuscan,  king  of  Tartary,  when  he  had 
reigned  for  twenty  years  held  a  feast  at  Sarra, 
and  after  the  third  course,  as  the  king  sat 
surrounded  by  his  nobles  hearing  his  minstrels, 
there  entered  a  strange  knight  bringing 
presents  from  the  king  of  Araby.  For  the  king 
he  brought  a  horse  of  brass,  which  in  the  space 
of  a  day  should  bear  him  wherever  he  pleased, 
or  should  soar  high  in  the  air  as  an  eagle, 
and  a  sword,  which  could  cut  through  armour 
"thick  as  a  branched  oak,"  and  the  wound 
it  made  could  only  be  healed  by  being  stroked 
by  the  flat  of  the  blade,  and  for  the  lady 
Canace,  the  king's  daughter,  a  Magic  Mirror 
which  should  foretell  adversity,  and  whether 
a  lover  were  true  or  false,  and  a  Ring  of  which 
the  virtue 

"  Is  this,  that  if  hire  list  it  for  to  were 
Upon  hire  thombe,  or  in  hire  purse  it  bere, 


1 68  The  Ring  of  Canace 

Ther  is  no  foule  that  fleeth  imder  heven 
That  she  ne  shal  wel  understand  his  steven, 
And  know  his  mening  openly  and plaine, 
And  answere  him  in  his  langage  again" 

And  all  the  nobles  marvelled  at  the  strange 
gifts.  The  horse  they  likened  to  winged 
Pegasus  or  the  horse  of  Troy,  and  the  sword 
to  the  spear  of  Achilles  which  could  both 
wound  and  heal,  and  the  Ring  seemed  to 
them  to  surpass  in  sorcery  all  others  save 
only  the  rings  of  Moses  and  Solomon.  And 
they  continued  in  revelry  and  dancing  until  it 
was  near  the  dawn. 

Now  the  lady  Canace  had  taken  her  Ring 
and  Mirror  and  had  early  retired  to  her 
chamber,  but  her  sleep  was  light  and  restless, 
for  the  phantasies  of  dream  were  woven  around 
the  gifts  of  Araby,  and  the  space  in  the  Mirror 
was  in  vision  tenanted,  and  she  awoke  at  day- 
break and  roused  her  maidens,  and  wandered 
out  in  the  park  just  as  the  fresh  ruddy  light  of 
the  sun  was  dispelling  the  morning  mist.  She 
heard  the  birds  joyously  welcoming  the  dawn, 
and  by  virtue  of  the  Ring  which  she  bore  on 
her  finger  she  understood  all  their  songs. 


The  Ring  of  Canace  169 

Presently  in  her  walk  she  came  to  where  the 
woods  resounded  with  a  piteous  cry,  and  on  a 
tree  there  sat  a  falcon  which  had  beaten  her- 
self with  her  wings  until  the  blood  had  started, 
and  had  torn  herself  with  her  beak  and  made 
ever  continual  lament,  and  seemed  like  to 
swoon  and  fall.  Canace  stopped  filled  with 
pity,  and  held  her  lap  to  catch  the  falcon  if 
she  fell,  and  asked  her  why  she  lamented. 

"  Is  this  for  sorwe  of  deth  or  losse  of  love  ? 
For  as  I  know  thise  be  the  causes  two 
That  causen  most  a  gentil  herte  woe" 

And  the  falcon  swooned  and  fell,  and  she 
tended  it  in  her  bosom,  and  presently  the 
falcon  told  her  that  she  had  been  loved  by  a 
tercelet  and  afterwards  forsaken,  and  for  this 
reason  she  was  heart-broken  and  wished  to 
die. 

Canace  carried  the  falcon  to  the  palace  and 
made  a  salve  of  herbs  for  it  and  ministered  to 
all  its  needs,  glad  to  have  found  some  sorrow 
that  she  might  comfort. 

So  the  hawk  is  left  in  Canace's  keeping: 
the  poet  promising  that  after  telling  of  the 
other  gifts  he  will  speak  again  of  the  Ring 


170  The  Ring  of  Canace 

and  of  how  the  falcon  got  her  love  again. 
But  "  The  Squieres  Tale  "  breaks  off  provok- 
ingly  in  mid  career,  leaving  vistas  of  adventures 
.unpursued,  of  wonderlands  unvisited.  The 
Ring  alone  of  the  magic  gifts  has  as  yet  served 
its  purpose  in  giving  to  Canace  understanding 
of  the  falcon's  sorrow ;  but  the  fulfilment  of 
the  promise  of  the  happy  ending,  and  the 
secrets  of  bird-language  to  which  in  the  course 
of  the  story  the  Ring  might  have  been  an  open 
sesame  —  these  we  can  but  follow  with  dim 
conjecture. 

It  is  her  own  sorrow  that  the  falcon  tells, 
her  own  life  history,  impact  of  love  and  grief. 
The  pity  of  the  blending  is  so  after  the  man- 
ner of  lives  human  as  to  suggest  the  thought 
that  it  is  indeed  the  tale  of  woman's  love  that 
is  "being  told,  that  the  falcon  was  a  maiden 
loved  and  forsaken,  and  by  sorcery  transformed 
into  a  bird,  plaintive  with  the  memory  of  her 
wrongs,  like  the  swallow  in  her  morning  lay 

"  Forse  a  memoria  de1  suoi  primi  guai" 

and  that  in  getting  back  her  love  again  she 
shall  be  free  from  the  spell  of  enchantment 
and  resume  her  natural  shape. 


The  Ring  of  Canace  171 

However,  the  Ring  of  Canace  does  not 
guide  us  so  far.  The  bridge  connecting  the 
story  with  the  traditions  of  India  and  Arabia, 
wherein  the  belief  in  metempsychosis  has 
found  expression,  is  a  bridge  spun  of  gossamer 
imaginings.  Reason  is  too  sure-footed  to 
leave  the  highway.  To  cross  it  we  must  be 
buoyed  up  on  the  wings  of  fantasy.  Guided 
thus  we  may  perceive  the  influence  of  the 
Buddhist  conception  of  the  soul  of  man  at  his 
death  inhabiting  the  bodies  of  different  animals 
until  the  days  of  its  sojourn  on  earth  were 
completed.  So  all  creatures  were  man's  com- 
peers, the  dwelling-places  of  his  forerunners 
in  the  mystery  of  existence,  the  abodes  where- 
in for  a  brief  space  a  portion  of  the  eternal 
has  deigned  to  dwell.  Eastern  romance  drank 
deep  of  this  conception  and  told  of  human 
beings  transformed  into  birds  or  beasts  by 
sorcery,  the  human  life  only  being  suspended 
to  be  resumed  on  release  from  enchantment, 
but  who  while  so  transformed  were  condemned 
to  silence  or  to  the  use  of  a  language  known 
but  infrequently ;  Beder,  prince  of  Persia,  in 
the  "Arabian  Nights,"  is  transformed  into  a 
white  bird,  and  as  such  is  dumb,  but  recovers 


172  The  Ring  of  Canace 

his  shape  on  being  sprinkled  with  magic 
water. 

Inarticulate,  unless  magic  ring  or  serpent's 
tongue  should  be  an  open  sesame  to  the  curious 
listener,  bird-melody  seemed  nevertheless  to 
be  a  striving  after  the  expression  of  things 
human.  They  seemed  spirits,  Peris  at  the 
gate,  who  would  fain  pierce  the  barrier  by 
song,  and  early  myth  fashioned  forth  the 
legends  which  each  was  striving  to  tell.  No 
book  has  done  more  to  perpetuate  and  give 
literary  expression  to  such  myths  than  Ovid's 
"Metamorphoses,"  which  in  the  mediaeval  age 
was  the  favourite  text-book  of  those  who 
sought  by  study  to  re-create  the  past  in 
legend. 

Significant  not  alone  for  their  beauty  and 
wealth  of  detail  are  these  legends  of  men 
changing  into  birds  and  trees  and  flowers. 
They  express  the  sense  of  kinship  with  nature 
as  opposed  to  the  modern  study  of  it.  We 
watch  the  phenomena  of  nature,  her  outlines, 
colours,  murmurings  and  scents,  and  see  a 
little  perhaps  of  her  methods,  but  in  the  ages 
of  myth  and  legend  men  saw  "  more  in  nature 
that  was  theirs."  The  laurel  turning  her 


The  Ring  of  Canace  173 

twisted  leaves  to  the  sun  was  Daphne  shrink- 
ing from  the  forceful  embraces  of  Apollo. 
Procne  and  Philomela  retold  their  woes  in 
song,  and  Alcyone  hovered  above  the  wave 
where  Ceyx  died.  The  handiwork  of  nature 
had  a  meaning  more  familiar,  for  all  her 
children  were  moulded  of  like  passions. 

There  was  another  glade  in  the  wood  of 
voices  apart  from  the  glades  Eastern  or 
Classic  —  a  glade  situate  in  a  far  recess,  dewy 
and  odorous,  and  visitants  to  it,  though  rare, 
were  not  unknown  in  the  days  when  the  wood 
had  pathways. 

Barefooted  they  wandered,  travel-stained, 
worn  by  vigils  and  fasting,  yet  of  purpose 
unwearied.  Nothing  recked  they  of  myth  or 
art  of  necromancy,  spurning  dragon's  blood 
as  fetish  of  the  idolater.  They  may  have 
borne  Canace's  Ring  when  they  passed  within 
the  portal,  but  they  bore  it  not  as  talisman  but 
as  emblem  —  emblem  of  purity  and  renuncia- 
tion of  all  worldly  self-seeking,  mystic  emblem 
of  union  with  what  is  holiest,  even  as  the  ring 
is  emblem  in  the  union  of  St.  Francis  with 
the  lady  Poverty,  or  in  the  marriage  of  St. 
Catherine  of  Siena  with  the  infant  Christ. 


174  The  Ring  of  Canace 

Not  touched  their  ears  as  those  of  Melampus 
by  serpents'  tongues :  they  gained  not  fore- 
knowledge of  fate,  they  won  no  fame  in 
divination  :  touched  rather  it  seemed  by  God's 
own  finger,  touched  to  the  cleansing  away  of 
all  dulness  and  grossness  of  earthly  purpose, 
and  when  they  entered  within  the  portal  the 
songs  that  they  heard  were  canticles  of  praise. 

There  is  a  beautiful  Breton  legend  of  a 
plant  called  Golden  Herb  which  shines  from 
afar  like  gold,  which  causes  whoever  touches 
it  with  bare  foot  to  fall  asleep  immediately 
and  understand  the  language  of  birds.  It  is 
seldom  found,  for  it  can  only  be  seen  at  early 
dawn  by  such  as  are  unsullied  by  aught  that 
is  evil. 

For  them  not  only  in  Brittany  is  Golden 
Herb  growing. 

Surely  it  grew  on  the  hillside  above  Asolo, 
and  Pippa  wandering  bare-footed  touched  it 
unknowingly ;  and  so  she  passed,  singing, 

"  Overhead  the  tree-tops  meet, 
Flowers  and  grass  spring  ''neath  one's  feet ; 
There  was  nought  above  me,  nought  below, 
My  childhood  had  not  learned  to  know : 


The  Ring  of  Canace  175 

For  what  are  the  voices  of  birds 

—  Ay,  and  of  beasts, —  but  words,  our  words, 

Only  so  much  more  sweet?  " 

What  need  of  talismans  for  such  as  she  ? 

A  pure  heart, —  this  was  the  Canace's  ring 
which  opened  the  portals  to  this  band  of  pil- 
grims as  they  wandered  in  the  dawn  of  faith, 
which  made  the  grass  gleam  golden  beneath 
their  feet,  the  dew  on  it  glistening  with  a  radi- 
ance caught  from  Heaven,  which  made  them 
to  be  asleep  to  much  that  it  is  better  to  be 
asleep  to,  and  tuned  their  ears  to  have  under- 
standing of  things  that  lie  apart  from  common 
hearing.  For  these  were  such  of  the  saints 
and  fathers  as  bore  themselves  as  exiles  and 
pilgrims,  seeking  in  solitude  and  contempla- 
tion to  attain  to  knowledge,  fulfilling  by  their 
lives  the  saying  in  the  "  De  Imitatione  "  that 
"  in  silence  and  in  stillness  the  religious  soul 
grows  and  learns  the  mysteries  of  Holy  Writ ; 
then  she  finds  rivers  of  tears,  wherein  she  may 
wash  and  cleanse  herself  night  after  night ; 
that  she  may  be  the  more  familiar  with  her 
Creator." 

This  attaining  of  knowledge  more  familiar 


176  The  Ring  of  Can  ace 

was  a  link  that  drew  them  closer  with  all 
created  things  —  alike  children  of  one  father, 
—  and  to  the  hermits  wherever  they  wandered 
it  seemed  they  were  in  the  hollow  of  His 
hand  and  the  birds  and  the  beasts  were  their 
brethren.  In  the  lives  of  many  of  the  saints, 
of  St.  Guthlac  of  Croyland,  of  St.  Columbanus 
in  the  solitude  of  the  Apennines,  it  is  recorded 
that  birds  ministered  to  their  wants,  and  that 
they  had  understanding  of  their  speech.  So 
in  the  mountain  fastnesses  around  the  monas- 
tery of  Alvernia  the  birds  of  the  air  were  all 
friends  of  St.  Francis  ;  they  flew  around  him 
and  sang  to  him  unceasingly,  and  he  under- 
stood them  and  answered  them  in  their  lan- 
guage. 

In  one  of  Giotto's  frescoes  in  the  upper 
church  of  St.  Francis  at  Assisi  he  is  repre- 
sented preaching  to  them.  They  are  sitting 
all  around  on  the  ground  and  on  the  branches 
of  trees,  and  the  saint  is  standing  talking  to 
them  very  quietly  and  earnestly  with  head 
rather  bent  forward  and  forefinger  raised  in 
emphasis. 

The  sermon  itself  as  given  in  "  The  Little 
Flowers  of  St.  Francis  "  has  a  simplicity  and 


The  Ring  of  Canace  177 

a  beauty  so  mediaeval,  so  unique,  if  we  except 
the  sermon  of  St.  Anthony  of  Padua  to  the 
fishes,  that  I  cannot  forbear  to  transcribe  it. 
I  quote  from  Mr.  W.  T.  Arnold's  translation. 
"  My  little  sisters,  the  birds,  much  bounden 
are  ye  unto  God,  your  Creator,  and  alway  in 
every  place  ought  ye  to  praise  Him,  for  that 
He  hath  given  you  liberty  to  fly  about  every- 
where, and  hath  also  given  you  double  and 
triple  raiment ;  moreover  He  preserved  your 
seed  in  the  ark  of  Noah,  that  your  race  might 
not  perish  out  of  the  world ;  still  more  are  ye 
beholden  to  Him  for  the  element  of  the  air 
which  He  hath  appointed  for  you  ;  beyond  all 
this,  ye  sow  not,  neither  do  you  reap ;  and 
God  feedeth  you,  and  giveth  you  the  streams 
and  fountains  for  your  drink ;  the  mountains 
and  the  valleys  for  your  refuge  and  the  high 
trees  whereon  to  make  your  nests ;  and  because 
ye  know  not  how  to  spin  or  sow,  God  clotheth 
you,  you  and  your  children  ;  wherefore  your 
Creator  loveth  you  much  seeing  that  He  hath 
bestowed  on  you  so  many  benefits  ;  and  there- 
fore, my  little  sisters,  beware  of  the  sin  of 
ingratitude,  and  study  always  to  give  praises 
unto  God." 


178  The  Ring  of  Canace 

So  St.  Francis's  exhortation  to  the  birds 
was  that  their  songs  should  be  always  songs 
of  praise.  But  what  the  birds  told  St.  Francis 
when  they  sang  to  him  in  the  woods  at  Alver- 
nia,  of  that  we  know  not  save  in  so  far  as  it 
is  written  in  the  actions  of  a  holy  life.  And 
before  leaving  the  legends  of  the  early  Church 
let  us  consider  what  the  life  of  St.  Francis  was. 
His  life  was  one  long  benison  to  his  fellow- 
men.  He  wooed  Poverty  as  a  mistress 
with  more  single-heartedness  and  concentra- 
tion than  we  can  muster  in  any  of  our  wooings. 
His  nights  were  spent  in  vigil  and  prayer. 
His  sanctity  and  zeal  in  self-sacrifice  were 
potent  to  draw  many  to  give  up  their  lives  in 
following  his  precepts.  We  must  believe  that 
by  faith  followed  with  single  purpose  he  had 
drawn  nearer  to  God ;  that  his  eyes  in  spirit- 
ual vision  saw  perhaps  farther  than  do  our 
own. 

We,  when  we  hear  the  voices  of  God's 
earthly  choristers  upraised  in  woods  and  mead- 
ows, are  as  they  who  hear  singing  in  strange 
unknown  numbers  and  can  but  conjecture  the 
meaning  of  the  strain,  but  to  him  the  portals 
of  that  kingdom  without  which  we  stand  may 


The  Ring  of  Canace  179 

have  been  opened,  for  him  the  songs  of  birds 
may  have  had  meaning  even  as  we  believe 
they  have  for  their  Creator,  whose  praises 
they  are  ever  singing. 


VIII 


ARK  to  the  horns  of  Elfland,  blow- 
ing, blowing !  Bonne  vieille,  you  re- 
member their  melody,  and  your 
heart-strings  thrill  with  it  still"  —thus  wrote 
Thackeray  in  the  Roundabout  Paper  "  On  a 
Peal  of  Bells,"  and  the  phrase  like  the  horns 
seemed  to  murmur  in  my  ears,  and  lay  un- 
dimmed  upon  the  tablets  of  memory  until  I 
met  it  again  in  the  Bugle  Song  in  "  The  Prin- 
cess." 

"  O  hark,  O  hear  I  how  thin  and  clear, 
And  thinner,  clearer,  farther  going  ! 

O  sweet  and  far  from  cliff  and  scar 

The  horns  of  Elfland  faintly  blowing  ! 

Blow,  let  us  hear  the  purple  glens  replying: 

Blow,  bugle;  answer,  echoes,  dying,  dying, dying" 

Tennyson  wrote  this  lyric  while  at  Killar- 
ney,  and  we  may  assume  that  the  heathery 


The  Horns  of  Elfland  181 

hills  and  greenest  of  all  valleys  suggested  the 
cliff  and  scar,  although  perhaps  unconsciously, 
his  presence  among  them  being  an  influence 
in  moving  the  poet's  mind.  And  so  the  hills 
wherein  the  horns  of  Elfland  blow  are  not 
entirely  the  hills  of  dream. 

Perhaps  the  melody  may  seem  something 
akin  to  the  half-heard  whisper  of  the  Celtic 
spirit,  lamenting  in  its  own  wild  glens  upon 
the  vision  of  a  fair  and  unattainable  past,  a 
thing  impact  of  the  lapping  of  lake  water  and 
the  soughing  of  wind  and  rain. 

Yet  fair  as  is  Glengarriff,  fair  —  inexpressibly 
fair  —  as  is  the  valley  of  Gweedore  with  the 
Gweebara  winding  slowly  round  the  base  of 
the  glittering  cone  of  Errigal, —  a  green  glade 
couched  amid  a  wild  expanse  of  billowy  moor 
and  peat-morass, —  fair  as  are  the  fastnesses 
of  Galway  and  Connemara,  the  hills  and  val- 
leys of  Elfland  are  something  fairer,  if  only  in 
that  they  are  too  elemental  to  have  local  hab- 
itation, and  so  are  fairer  even  as  dreams  are 
fairer  than  reality,  or  as  hope's  vista  is  fairer 
than  the  compass  of  endeavour.  And  even 
as  Elfland  is  fairer,  so  the  blowing  of  the 
magic  horns  is  softer  yet  more  compelling  than 


182  The  Horns  of  Elftand 

the  music  of  the  Celtic  and  alike  of  all  other 
lyres. 

Now  before  reading  farther  of  these  horns 
of  Elfland  consider  have  you  ever  heard  their 
melody.  It  is  better  perhaps  for  your  comfort 
in  this  workaday  world  if  you  have  not ;  for 
the  fatal  love  of  the  Gods  has  more  than  one 
gift  in  its  dower,  and  there  are  some  who  have 
seemed  to  their  fellows  as  dead  when  that  they 
have  heard  earth-music  and  wandered  afield 
with  eyes  dream-laden.  Other  melodies  may 
have  seemed  to  you  as  fairy  music ;  they  have 
stirred  you  strangely  from  that  accustomed 
creature  of  self,  and  their  burden  has  rung  for 
a  time  so  insistent  in  your  ears  that  you  have 
in  imagination  given  yourself  up  to  its  dictates, 
and  followed  on  the  path  it  seemed  to  point 
out,  armed  cap-a-pie,  and  impetuous  for  what- 
ever adventure  might  befall.  A  pictured 
Ferdinand  for  the  moment  treading  to  mystic 
guidance  the  sward  of  the  isle  of  enchantment. 

But  the  music  that  drew  you  on  was  not 
Ariel's ;  it  led  you  to  no  Miranda ;  it  rifted 
suddenly  to  silence  amid  the  interstices  of  the 
wood,  and  left  you  loitering  alone,  stumbling 
amid  the  brambles  with  starved  lips  and  weary 


The  Horns  of  Elfland  183 

feet,  striving  for  a  while  to  recapture  the  lost 
melody,  and  then  you  have  abandoned  the 
quest,  petulant  that  fancy  has  lured  your  foot- 
steps, have  gone  back  to  the  highway,  have 
heard  again  the  speech  of  your  fellows  and 
solaced  your  ears  that  were  still  an-hungering. 
It  was  not  the  blowing  of  the  bugle  that  led 
you  on, —  not  Ariel's  music,  or  if  the  sprite 
were  indeed  present  the  tune  of  the  catch  was 
as  though  "  played  by  the  picture  of  nobody," 
and  you  followed  in  bewilderment,  a  Trinculo 
buffeted  by  unseen  powers.  A  fantasy,  a  trick 
of  the  ear,  it  called  you  to  something  apart 
from  yourself,  and  you  could  not  make  the 
passage. 

List  to  the  blowing  of  the  magic  horn  I 
Faintly,  faintly  revealed  it  may  be,  and  yet  the 
faintest  of  its  receding  echoes  you  will  not 
mistake,  for  it  sounds  the  dream  that  is  within 
you.  You  may  not  hearken  to  it,  and  if  ever 
unheeded  its  melody  will  become  fainter,  it 
will  be  a  rarer  visitant  than  when  it  first  broke 
upon  your  ears,  but  it  calls  you  to  the  highest 
that  is  in  you  to  accomplish,  it  reveals  your 
ultimate  self.  Primal  nature  in  some  mysteri- 
ous unfathomable  communion  with  that  part 


184  The  Horns  of  Elfland 

of  itself  which  is  within  you,  has  weighed  your 
capacities  and  perplexities,  has  outlined  forth 
what  may  be  the  result  of  endeavour,  and  the 
vision  thus  foreshadowed  to  which  hope  as- 
pires, and  which,  though  you  may  not  as  yet 
attain,  you  may  keep  undimmed,  a  glittering 
lodestar  of  your  quest, —  this  it  is  to  which  the 
bugle  calls  you. 

If  you  heed  not  the  call,  if  you  abandon 
that  self  unseen  and  eternal  for  the  self 
ephemeral,  you  have  so  far  as  in  you  lies  made 
the  great  refusal,  and  if  the  light  of  dawn 
ever  parts  again  the  curtain  behind  which  you 
counterfeit  sleeping  and  waking,  and  shines 
upon  you  so  that  you  really  wake,  for  a  mo- 
ment you  will  seem  to  realize, — 

"  O  God!  O  God!  that  it  were  possible 

To  undo  things  done  ;  to  call  back  yesterday  /" 

—  and  then  the  vision  will  pass  from  you, 
you  will  be  spared  the  shame  of  seeing  what 
you  might  have  been. 

List  to  the  blowing  of  the  magic  horn  ! 
Other  melodies  serve  as  preludes.  For  as 
music  is  the  most  passionate,  the  most  sense- 
compelling,  and  the  most  ethereal  of  all  the 


The  Horns  of  Elfiand  185 

arts,  so  its  pathway  to  the  mind  is  the  most 
intuitive  and  the  most  direct.  Ear-gate  is  a 
citadel  ever  harder  to  defend  than  Eye-gate. 
Ulysses  left  them  both  unguarded :  he  saw  the 
Sirens,  and  he  heard  their  song,  and  in  inten- 
tion he  was  subjugate.  If  his  companions 
had  had  their  eyes  bandaged  instead  of  their 
ears  being  rilled  with  wax,  if  Ear-gate  had 
been  left  unguarded  so  that  they  had  heard  the 
Sirens'  song,  then  they  would  never  have 
rowed  away. 

Music  by  this  power  of  dominating  the 
senses  is  a  prelude  of  thought  and  of  melodies 
which  the  ear  cannot  hear. 

The  song  or  the  orchestra  has  ceased.  It 
has  stirred  you,  and  ceasing  has  left  you  in 
a  tranced  expectancy.  Your  ear  strives  to 
re-create  it,  to  pierce  the  intangible  web  of 
silence  and  follow  its  echoes.  But,  quick 
as  conceived,  your  purpose  is  abandoned,  for 
there  is  no  more  silence, —  only  the  interval  is 
over.  Maybe  the  opera  has  ceased,  the  cur- 
tain has  fallen,  the  singers  have  been  called 
before  it,  and  now  the  orchestra  have  gone 
away  to  their  homes,  and  you  are  walking 
home  in  the  cool  night  air.  But  of  silence 


i86  The  Horns  of  Elfland 

has  been  formed  a  melody  which  floats  around 
you,  steeping  your  ears  and  senses  with  a 
new  rich  significance.  For  you  alone  is  the 
melody.  The  lyre  of  Orpheus  was  never  so 
compelling,  and  yet  the  trees  around  your 
path  tower  straightly  up  to  heaven.  They  hear 
it  not,  or  they  would  crouch  in  tremulous 
wonder.  For  you  alone  is  the  melody,  for  it 
is  a  part  of  yourself. 

Not  only  music  of  man's  making,  but  that 
of  all  nature  is  a  prelude  to  the  blowing  of 
the  magic  horn. 

The  songs  of  birds,  the  cadence  of  moving 
waters,  the  wind  lifting  the  leaves  of  trees  — 
alike  reveal  it.  If  you  are  where  all  these 
have  ceased  utterly,  still  there  is  not  silence 
—  with  your  ear  to  the  ground  you  may  hear 
the  faint  murmur  of  the  brown  earth  in  travail 
in  the  quickening  of  life  innumerable. 

Nature   is    perpetually    in    a    condition    of 
music ;  it  is   an   ever-changing   symphony,    a 
harmony  of  form  and  sound. 
"  Thou  canst  not  wave  thy  staff  in  air, 
Or  dip  thy  paddle  in  the  lake, 
But  it  carves  the  bow  of  beauty  there, 
And  the  ripples  in  rhyme  the  oar  forsake ;  " 


The  Horns  of  Elfland  187 

and  when  the  receding  ripples  have  won  to 
shore,  and  it  seems  again  as  though  keel  had 
never  furrowed  the  surface  of  the  lake,  still 
there  is  not  silence,  the  moving  waters  have 
resumed  their  eternal  melody.  Eternal  —  yet 
ever  changing, —  at  times  tempest-driven  to 
the  crescendos  of  exultation  or  despair,  and 
anon  dropping  to  the  faintest  whisperings  of 
motion.  The  ripple  of  the  river  ever  running 
seaward,  the  beating  of  the  waves  upon  the 
shore,  the  lapping  of  lake  water,  all  are  the 
recurrence  of  a  rhythm  that  has  been  from 
the  beginning,  that  has  murmured  in  the  ears 
of  those  before  us,  and  will  murmur  when  we 
have  passed  away  like  shadows,  and  as  we  in 
our  transitory  day  meet  the  symbol  of  this 
eternity,  its  note  wakes  the  chord  responsive 
in  our  being  and  calls  into  action  that  within 
us  which  is  most  unfettered  by  the  things  of 
time. 

Water  seen  far  beneath  has  also  an  inevi- 
table suggestion  of  music.  From  the  summit 
of  the  pine-clad  hill  the  lake  lies  apparent, 
motionless  in  argent  ecstasy.  The  trees  on 
its  banks,  dark  against  the  gleaming  water, 
bend  down  and  jealously  shut  in  the  sound  of 


1 88  The  Horns  of  Elfland 

its  whisperings  that  they  may  not  reach  my 
ear.  The  air  is  silent,  trembling  to  the  sun, 
and  downward  gazing  I  am  drawn  Narcissus- 
like  to  the  mirror  of  imaginings,  and  the  tremor 
of  the  air  is  as  the  faint  beat  of  wings  made 
audible,  and  it  gathers  to  a  cadence  that  seems 

"  Like  an  sEolian  harp  that  wakes 

No  certain  air,  but  overtakes 

far  thought  with  music  that  it  makes  ;  " 

and  the  far  thought  is  in  part  a  memory,  in 
part  an  expectation,  and  the  memory  is  of  a 
dream,  and  the  expectation  is  of  the  dream's 
fulfilment,  and  the  music  takes  me  a  willing 
captive,  for  my  heart-strings  are  ever  thrilling 
with  its  melody. 

Oh  to  dream  ever,  if  this  be  dreaming,  for 
thus  to  dream  is  to  know  more  truly  than 
waking  ears  may  hear  or  eyes  may  see ! 


IX 
ROS  ROSARUM 

>T  was  in  Prospero's  enchanted  island 
that  Gonzalo  told  about  that  com- 
monwealth of  his  and  its  Utopian 
virtues.  "  Had  he  plantation  of  the  isle," — 
and  then  he  fell  to  thinking  what  he  would 
do.  "  Full  of  noises,  sounds,  and  sweet  airs  " 
the  island, —  yet  for  Gonzalo  it  was  but  an 
old  fancy  that  they  recaptured,  and  the  com- 
monwealth was  not  a  dream  first  heralded  by 
Ariel's  music,  but  a  tale  oft  repeated.  One 
judges  this  to  be  the  case  because  Gonzalo 
was  an  old  man,  and  old  men  are  more  prone 
to  recur  to  the  dreams  of  youth  than  to  have 
new  fancies,  and  because  obviously  the  other 
lords  in  attendance  on  the  king  had  heard  him 
tell  the  tale  before.  Their  comments  antici- 
pate the  text.  They  knew  just  the  point  at 
which  the  thread  would  be  riven  by  the  gusts 
of  conflicting  excellences  and  the  latter  end  of 


190  Ros  Rosarum 

the  commonwealth  would  forget  its  beginning. 
Moreover,  this  very  attempt  to  combine  in- 
congruous virtues,  to  load  the  body  politic 
with  more  than  its  due  equipment  of  members, 
shows  that  the  would-be  maker  of  the  consti- 
tution owed  no  debt  to  Ariel's  music,  which  — 
however  fleeting  —  is  yet  at  harmony  with  it- 
self,—  and  lo !  here  are  the  incompatibilities. 

"  No  sovereignty, —  " 

"  Yet  he  would  be  king  orft" 

No  wonder  Gonzalo's  commonwealth  never 
grew  unwieldy,  but  remained  eminently  port- 
able, so  that  he  was  able  to  carry  it  about 
with  him  all  his  life,  from  Naples  to  the  island 
and  from  the  island  back  to  Naples,  and  I 
know  not  to  how  many  cities  and  islands  else. 
And  he  the  maker  was  cicerone  to  whoever 
would  enter,  —  and  like  the  Ancient  Mariner 
constrained  the  guests,  —  yet  made  no  long 
narration,  for  the  listener  soon  pointed  out 
that  the  ship  of  state  was  unseaworthy  in  dry 
dock,  and  could  not  even  take  the  water. 
Dear  to  the  maker  its  every  beam,  seaworthy 
or  no,  and  he  left  the  listener  turned  critic. 
He  would  not  have  much  else  to  do  with  the 


Ros  Rosarum  191 

commonwealth  beyond  finding  listeners  to  hear 
about  it,  until  he  had  taken  heart  to  discard 
one  of  its  incongruous  virtues.  Bitter  the 
parting  belike,  but  we  must  give  up  something 
in  compromise  to  the  actual.  No  ship  of 
dreams  ever  came  to  the  immortal  port  with 
all  her  cargo  in  the  hold.  Not  purposefully 
abandoned  maybe,  only  left  until  the  ensuing 
voyage  at  some  port  of  call  that  we  think  to 
revisit,  and  the  next  voyage  is  in  waters 
unfamiliar,  and  the  dream  —  borne  a  little  way 
and  then  left  —  is  carried  on  by  another 
mariner. 

Even  in  an  isle  of  fantasy  we  may  not  hope 
to  unite  all  the  republican  virtues,  and  yet 
have  kings  and  queens.  In  this  particular 
choice  I  should  never  share  the  hesitance  of 
Gonzalo,  for  I  would  give  up  all  the  distinc- 
tively republican  virtues  twenty  times  over  for 
real  kings  and  queens,  if  only  in  order  that 
there  might  be  no  incongruity  in  the  presence 
of  princesses  and  the  usages  of  chivalry. 
This  only  serves  to  show  that  the  incompati- 
bilities in  my  island  are  not  Gonzalo's.  There 
are  hesitations  there  too  —  enough  and  to 
spare. 


192  Ros  Rosarum 

For  alas  1  we  are  all  the  Gonzalos  of  our 
own  isles  of  fantasy.  Our  entry  would  pro- 
duce chaos.  Our  purposes  are  irreconcilable. 
No  sovereignty  —  and  yet  we  would  be  kings. 
This  it  is  that  makes  lives  come  to  nothing  — 
halting  ever  on  the  brink  of  achievement. 

This  —  and  not  that  the  endeavour  is 
visionary.  Follow  the  vision  —  follow  the  fair 
vision  —  and  the  more  fugitive  the  farther 
belike  your  course.  For  one  life  lost  in  the 
far  sea  where  the  lone  star  beacons,  how  many 
thousands  have  beaten  the  surge  'twixt  sea 
and  shore  with  ineffectual  hands  ! 

"  The  desire  of  the  moth  for  the  star  "  — 
useless  striving  —  emblem  of  vain  endeavour, 
and  yet  it  flies  higher  than  do  other  moths,  — 
far  above  the  smoke  and  flame  of  the  candle. 

Seekers  of  things  visionary  —  star-struck 
moths  —  they  discern  the  highest  and  seek  it 
in  the  measure  of  their  strength. 

And  oh  !  the  stars  are  so  far  away,  and  the 
measure  of  strength  at  best  so  halting  and 
frail,  that  there  must  be  no  falterings  of  pur- 
pose in  the  flight. 

For  many  one  star,  and  on  each  seeker  one 
ray  falling,  and  this  the  predestined  pathway 


Ros  Rosarum  193 

of  the  flight.  They  who  have  soared  the 
highest  are  they  who  have  kept  the  pathway. 
Single  the  vision  seen.  Single  the  thought 
attending.  Strength  has  been  theirs  to 
renounce  all  else. 

"  Other  heights  in  other  lives,  God  willing, 
All  the  gifts  from  all  the  lives,  your  own,  Love" 

As  yet  one  oblation  — for  this  life  is  all  too 
brief  for  the  fashioning  of  one  gift  meet  of 
sen-ice. 

Seekers  of  the  ideal !  We  look  with  curious 
eyes  at  the  pathways  wherein  they  sought,  in 
quest  of  things  immaterial,  of  honour  in  deeds, 
of  love,  of  faith,  of  things  than  these  more 
visionary,  "  things  impossible  and  cast  beyond 
the  moon."  Single  the  vision  seen  —  yet  ever 
the  manner  of  the  seeking  has  been  but  in  the 
measure  of  their  strength,  halting  and  frail. 
If  happiness  has  attended  them  in  the  quest 
it  has  come  as  a  gift  unexpected,  unsought. 
Peace  they  have  known  —  but  only  the  peace 
following  long  endeavour,  peace  too  deep  for 
conjecture.  And  withal  to  aspire  and  ever  to 
aspire  nor  conscious  know  attainment  And 
yet  of  this  what  know  we  ? 


194  R°s  Rosarum 

Whatever  is  loveliest  in  the  memories  of 
deed,  whatever  is  loveliest  in  the  treasures 
of  art  and  song,  whatever  in  the  beholding 
brings  us  nearer  than  aught  else  to  the 

"  Dim  vision  of  the  far  immortal  Face, 

Divinely  fugitive,  that  haunts  the  world, 

And  lifts  man 's  spiral  thought  to  lovelier  dreams, ' ' 

these  —  all  these  —  are  but  the  broken  endeav- 
ours, the  stammerings  of  the  tongues,  the 
fumbling  of  the  hands  of  such  as  have  striven 
of  single  purpose  to  behold.  Only  the  gifts 
that  they  would  fain  fashion  when  near  to  the 
presence.  And  we  are  led  in  dream  of  their 
offerings.  And  in  their  lives  they  have  wrought 
so  wondrously.  What  of  their  thought  unex- 
pressed ?  How  may  we  conjecture  of  their 
dreams  ?  How  of  the  vision  that  their  eyes 
have  looked  upon  ? 

Of  some  of  these  quests  we  make  no  longer 
manner  of  following.  They  are  meet  only  for 
the  days  of  mediaeval  enchantments,  and  such 
enchantments  are  all  outworn,  —  all  except 
the  last  enchantment  of  their  memory.  The 
wiser  now  in  refusal  —  wise  only  in  despite. 
"  Alles  ist  gleich,  es  lohnt  sich  Nichts  —  es 


Ros  Rosarum  195 

hielft  kein  Suchen,  es  giebt  auch  keine  gliick- 
seligen  Inseln  mehr." 

Gonzalo  never  found  location  for  his  isle, 
but  Prospero  found  an  "  isle  fortunate  "  in  his 
isle  of  banishment.  These  followers  of  the 
vision  are  like  the  rather  to  Prospero.  Single 
purpose  is  as  potent  as  magic  art. 

The  quest  of  the  beautiful  is  eternal.  "  For 
ever  wilt  thou  love,  and  she  be  fair."  The  ideal 
was  before  you  sought. 

It  drew  forth  the  soul  of  Faustus  to  its  lips, 
and  men  shall  dream  of  Helen  in  ages  yet 
unborn.  No  pursuit  is  ever  abandoned.  No 
ideals  are  ever  as  though  they  had  never  been. 
No  quest  but  shall  have  ending  upon  some 
visionary  shore. 

"But  each  man  murmurs,  '  O  my  Queen, 
I  follow,  till  I  make  thee  mine.1  " 


Of  their  ivorks :  Deep  in  the  deep  heart's 
core  of  all  the  roses  is  the  mystic  incommuni- 
cable essence,  which  vibrates  through  each 
petal,  charging  it  with  form  and  colour  and 
fragrance,  so  that  the  rose  is  impact  of  all 


196  Ros  Rosarum 

these  qualities  and  they  become  symbols  of 
its  presence. 

Paradise  in  Dante's  "  Vision  "  is  shaped  as 
a  pure  white  rose,  and  the  centre  far  within  is 
a  sun  of  light  that  makes  radiant  the  whole, 
and  the  petals  circling  outward  leaf  by  leaf 
are  the  courts  wherein  dwell  the  assembly  of 
the  saints.  The  white  rose  this  of  leaves 
eternal. 

There  are  roses  upturned  towards  it  —  roses 
of  man's  making  that  live  long  after  they  who 
have  fashioned  them,  and  in  fading  fade  not 
wholly. 

Some  of  these  are  the  roses  of  mediaeval 
beauty.  The  scattered  leaves  are  still  fragrant. 

Some  are  white  and  untroubled  of  years, 
some  red  as  though  they  who  had  spent  their 
lives  in  growing  had  watered  them  with  their 
own  heart's  blood.  Yet  of  such  watering 
cometh  not  their  fragrance.  These  are  the 
roses  on  which  the  dew  has  fallen. 


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